I woke up this morning and walked to the front window, as I do every day, to check out the sunrise. Whoa, those are dark clouds, I thought.
Weird sunrise.
I then looked to the right and saw fire! What the heck?
I was too shocked to get a photo with the fireball.
I told Lee something bad had happened. Sure enough, it had. By the time Lynn H and I talked we found out it was a horrible train/semi truck accident on the other side of Cameron in the Marlow community. You could see it all over the county. The photos were so scary.
Our Sheriff took this one.
The train cars had some petroleum products and coal in them. Luckily the hazardous material got quickly moved. The good news is no one died and not many structures were damaged.
This is the picture that scared me!
I do have friends who will have a hard time getting to work until this is cleared up. it will be a while, apparently. The fire is still burning, too.
6 pm this evening
It was even on the BBC News! And the ABC news on TV!
Unfortunately they showed the wrong footage…
I was so shocked that I said to a coworker, “This is probably the worst disaster in Milam County since…uh…last week.”
Local TV News.
I’d be fine if we actually did NOT have a disaster every week from now on. I was really out of it trying to do a presentation at work, because I wasn’t yet sure my friends who live near there were okay.
Dang.
I tried to take a cheerful walk to see Apache and Fiona. When I got home, there was Vlassic running around with a dead baby bunny. GEEZ!
It’s a present for Jim. I hope he likes it.
I’m ready to chill out with no icky things. I’m gonna spend the evening coloring. My book is too scary and I’m too worn out to knit.
That yeah, we need shades. Wow is ole Sol making fast work of the ice. Even though it’s well below freezing outside, the ice is crashing and booming off the roof, and clear patches are starting to show up.
The image doesn’t do justice to the shininess.
The trees had rainbow diamonds in them this morning, and just look at the Chihuly sculpture our rain chain made!
Ice ice baby
I couldn’t write or work much yesterday, because the cell towers weren’t working. So Lee and I watched movies on DVD most of the day.
Cloudy yesterday.
I did make it out to check animals and see if we got any mail (no). Penney loved running and sliding on the ice. She went full tilt.
This is fun.
The layer of ice was over water in lots of spots. It was hard to find the right places to step. Neither Carlton nor I moved very fast.
This is NOT fun.
Ice is now falling off the roof again and booming, so the dogs are close by me. Penney and Carlton are even getting along!
Taking care of each other
All the toting and fetching of water has been hard on Ralph, so Sara and I are taking over for him now. I’m pretty sure the driveway has melted enough to get out! Freedom! Of course, the water supply is spotty.
From yesterday.
But, all in all, we see the light at the end of the tunnel, so I have my sunglasses ready. Maybe it will thaw out the water heater and heat pump and we can be clean and warm again inside!
Such a dreamer.
Diamond trees
I’m hearing my friends and coworkers in Austin are getting heat and power back, too. I sure hope some of the infrastructure issues can be fixed.
Ice is zero, because that’s how cold it is in Celsius. COVID is +1, because I got my first Moderna vaccination today. I’m really relieved to get the process started, because it means I might be able to go back to my nice office in Cameron without being so paranoid about potential exposure from Hearts, Homes and Hands staff who work with so many clients (and we are glad they do). Anyway, that’s why I got to get the shot before turning 65 or 64 or whatever age it is.
This is a good thing.
The Vaccination
The County Health Department has the luxury of two closed hospitals to use in cases like this (thanks to all the rural hospitals closing down…moving on…). That meant there were lots of rooms for counseling and giving the shots. Everyone was SO nice. You could just see how happy they are to be doing this for our citizens.
Sad room, wishing it could be part of a hospital again.
The nurse who counseled me was especially nice, and we spent a lot of time praising the County Judge, who has been quite the stoic through this whole pandemic. Half the county says he’s the Devil and half says he’s a Saint. Whichever, the job certainly has been more than he thought it would be when he ran for office!
All fogged up. And I have on two masks.
The only part about the whole thing was that, because it’s truly cold and most of the people getting their vaccines are elderly, they had everyone wait inside rather than sitting in their cars and being called in. I truly understand why they did it, but GEEZ I felt claustrophobic waiting in a hallway filled with fragile people, where there was no way to get 6 feet away from anyone. I did double mask, though, and I’m sure most of those folks were like me and never leave their houses except for things like vaccinations!
They DID have chairs spaced out. The ones next to each other are for couples.
Now I just have to wait a month to get the other shot, then two more weeks and I’ll feel a bit better interacting with folks (with mask).
The Ice
One thing I realized when I was driving to Rockdale for the vaccination is that up here in Walker’s Creek/Silver City (or wherever I live), we got much more ice than only a few miles south of us did. Some of Rockdale’s trees looked perfectly normal. On the other hand, there are lots of trees down here (and my friends in northwest Austin really, really had lots of damage).
These poor trees just keep getting smaller and smaller every time there’s bad weather.
On the other hand, ice sure is pretty.
I love this ice-encapsulated beggar’s purse!
I’m glad the temperature is a balmy 32 F (0 C) today, since I need to load up on hay for Apache for the upcoming Polar Vortex. Sara and Ralph got blankets on all the horses, but Fiona is so fuzzy, she’s fine. Everyone has shelter and seemed just fine this morning, once I broke the ice in the water troughs, which I will have to do again this evening, I’m sure.
We are fine, and have hay. And all the cattle are munching away, happy as can be.
Enjoy some more photos of our icy time. By Sunday we should be getting snow or worse. It may get down to the OTHER 0 degrees! This is NOT normal Texas weather!
Along with Lee and two other business partners, I used to be a part of a real estate organization called FortuneBuilders. While it was an investment, the classes and networking ended up being well worth it. The leaders were a very positive bunch of human beings, and they brought in good motivational speakers and topics (I am a HARSH judge of motivational speakers, so when I say they were good, I’m not kidding).
Sometimes we had fun at those conferences
Anyhow, one of the things the FortuneBuilder folks stressed was that it takes a lot of small successes among even more setbacks and challenges to get ahead in whatever you’re trying to do. They encouraged us to “Celebrate All Wins” no matter how big or small (if you got a response to one of your annoying postcards offering to buy someone’s home, for example). They even gave out shirts emblazoned with CAW to people who shared their wins at conferences (ah, I remember live conferences).
They are also nice and comfy shirts. By the way, my closet is STILL organized and in good shape.
This morning, I was telling Lee about something that was challenging at work that I did a good job handling, and he said we need to make a bigger deal out of these things, like back in the good old CAW days. The idea works for home health agencies, software companies, horsemanship endeavors, fitness goals, and even interpersonal relationships. In other words, it works in all areas of our own lives!
Here’s Russell interacting with one of those motivational speakers
I’m going to take Lee up on it and celebrate my wins for the past day or two!
I came up with a goal today that I truly want to achieve. I want to stop my frenzy at least three times a day, pause, and notice what I’m grateful for wherever I am.
Yesterday I noticed the golden sun on swirling grass.
Here’s a thing many religious traditions get right. So many ask practitioners to pause to pray, reflect, chant or perform a ritual at intervals throughout the day. Think of all those nuns, monks, and traditional lay people who rise to pray, bow to Mecca, ring a bell, or whatever. They stop what they are doing and appreciate what they’ve got.
I paused to watch the sun rise this morning, as did many of my friends.
Slowing down to the speed of life is so good for the soul. It’s a gratitude practice any of us can do. Or it’s a way to stay close to our Source, whatever we call it.
This afternoon I paused to be grateful for a very odd dog and her beloved possum skull.
One thing we’ve all become aware of lately is how quickly things change. It’s more obvious to me every day. So tonight I’ll appreciate the wool running through my fingers as a sweet, white dog curls up in my chair. I won’t have it forever, so I’ll treasure it now.
Chickens don’t live forever, so go ahead, Bertie, peck my shoe.
Every day, at least three mindful pauses! Go, Suna.
Let’s see if I can get anything written today. I’ve been having technology issues, annoying bill-paying issues, and trouble doing what I set out to do today. Cows are mooing their asses off outside, too. So, I’m hoping a pleasant blogging break will help get me back on track to do some proofreading.
We seem to be lost. Update: not lost, separated so they can get some treatments. Still, unhappy.
Meanwhile, as I briefly mentioned last week, I have been looking more into how bullet journaling works, since my work book group friends all said they sort of do it, but would like to know more. You know me, I went out and bought the book, after reading up on two popular forms of bullet journaling online, the original bullet journal (by Ryder Carroll) and the Full Focus Planner (by Michael Hyatt), which is what Lee uses.
I might have ordered this because it looks cool and has cork on the outside.
Even though I have a nice-looking journal I use right now, in what turns out to be a semi-bullet journal format, I ordered another journal, because I forgot to check whether the book I’m using opens flat. It doesn’t, and that is more than a little irritating, even though it’s a pretty little book. I can use it for something else.
I know this journaling style is all the rage these days, but, as usual, I avoided looking into it, since I have my own system. But, one of my goals is to learn more, in general, so I’ll learn more. So far, I’ve learned how important BuJo journal proponents believe it is to write things down by hand. I’ve always agreed with their premise that writing helps cement things, which I why I was such a big note-taker in college.
Bullet journals use dots, not lines. I think this is for freedom? I’m not that far in the book. I like dots, though.
The handwriting fans maintain that typing is not as good for focusing as the act of writing on paper, mainly because typing goes so fast that you don’t necessarily really think about it. Hmm, no wonder my blog doesn’t make sense; my hands just go typing way ahead of my brain. I honestly find typing to be equally helpful, but I also think my brain works a little differently than some people’s.
Nonetheless, I know my handwriting has become a LOT worse since I stopped doing it so often, so maybe writing more intentionally in a bullet journal will help with that. You see, a LOT of people make their journals into pieces of art, which all sorts of colors, drawings, stenciled headings, and stickers upon stickers. That has to slow down the “rapid logging” process, don’t you think? Maybe they just do it as they prepare their monthly sections. Maybe I should read more of the book.
I think one reason I hesitated to look into this stuff is that before, I felt the way Lee journaled was very rigid, and that may or may not be right. It is very goal oriented, so you don’t get to do things that don’t contribute to a goal. There goes my fondness for random activities and plain old fun (so, one of my goals is to have fun…HA).
My practice. I even put in a sticker and used a template yesterday (blurred to obscure work notes).
I was happy to see that there’s a LOT of freedom in bullet journals. You can put in art, write stories, keep lists, track your food, or whatever you find important. The best freedom, though, is to get rid of things that don’t work for you. That’s very Agile, I think, as is the iterative monthly planning. Oh goodness, Agile project management is everywhere in my life these days!
Let’s see what happens once I get my journal actually going. I’m still using the old one and practicing BuJo style bullets and style. I need to finish the book and learn about all the components before I mess up the new one. I mean, use it however I want to.
Do you journal? Is blogging journaling? Memoir writing? Narcissism? Who knows.
Yesterday I took a few pictures as I approached the ranch on my walk.
Right past the bridge.
It’s a mid-winter view only a property owner could love. There’s last year’s evil Georgia cane, some fencerow trees planted by birds, ugly power lines, and my house way in the distance. But, seeing that bottom land makes my heart swell, because it’s home.
It’s a field, all right.
I see dead trees and pretty live ones. I know the trees provide habitat and cover for wildlife, like the cottontail I saw yesterday and all those sparrows (yesterday I saw gorgeous Harris’s sparrows, chipping sparrows, yellow-throated sparrows, vesper sparrows and more). I love this winter landscape.
When you get to know a place, you see it’s beauty and unique features all year round.
Rooster Digression
Late yesterday afternoon, Lee and I took a walk around the house area, looking at the winter life. When we came back up, we saw the chickens, but heard some loud cackling from inside the garage. Lee said it sounded like someone had laid an egg. But, all the hens were nearby. It had to be Bruce.
How did I get up here? How do I get down?
We walked in and found that, yes, Bruce was making the noise. He was sitting on top of the garage fridge looking confused.
I’m king of the hill!
He does like high spots, like Gertie the guinea did. He just seemed to be having trouble figuring out how to get back down. He did, eventually! He was all cozy in the coop when I went out to shut their door.
I hope your home brings you some joy during this bleak midwinter. Some of my US friends are getting pretty snowfalls!
Hey, so we’re all living through this pandemic, right? We all listen to our preferred news outlets, discuss it with family and friends, have our own experiences, and then decide how we are going to cope.
Very few of us are hiding and ignoring what’s going on, unlike Cozy Carlton here.
I know a lot of people, in Cameron and Austin, but also around the world. They sure differ in how they decide to live their pandemic lives. Here in Cameron, I know people who haven’t changed their lives at all, except having to deal with store closures. I also know people whose underlying issues and financial means make them most comfortable not leaving their house at all.
Most people are somewhere in between. My children have to work. Many people are in that position, so they do what they can, wearing masks and washing hands a lot. Some people go grocery shopping and such, but limit their trips. Others figure out what shops or services are not crowded or taking precautions and use them.
Penney stays home.
Nearly all of us have our mask collections, since we can’t go places without them, but some are more careful with their technique than others.
Here are Lee’s masks drying.
Why are you telling us this?
The point is that, as with so many other things, there’s no one right way to deal with the COVID outbreak. People choose to make decisions based on information that matters to them and act accordingly. There are a LOT of factors involved, like personal philosophy, your risk factors, and your comfort level.
Harvey points out that his comfort level is high.
Because of all this, I’ve made the choice to not judge people on their choices, even when I disagree or am not comfortable with them. I don’t know their reasons much of the time, and when I do know them, I figure it’s their business.*
What’s the issue?
I was a little surprised that when I shared my recent hair update, most of the comments were from people who seemed uncomfortable with going to salons. I felt a bit judged, I have to say. Of course every single commenter had higher risk factors that me (age, illness, immune system stuff, etc.). If I was in that group, I might have made a different decision, myself.
I can sure see how people who can’t get their hair cut might wish they could! I don’t blame them. I wish I could travel as much as some of my friends have. And I know people weren’t thrilled when I did travel. Yep.
I completely respect those of you who haven’t cut your hair in a year. You are doing what works for you, having evaluated the risks. But, I also evaluated the risks. I chose a small salon that has made many modifications in the last year. They require masks at all times, don’t let clients near each other, and sanitize like crazy. I know the hairdresser. I took the risk based on my comfort level.
We are all under so much stress these days. Let’s consider giving others a break and assume they are making their decisions based on what works for them, even when it’s not what you’d do.
Anyway, now you know why I didn’t mention my previous two haircuts! And yes, if I was under one of the endless quarantines I’ve been in, from being exposed to someone who’s been exposed to someone, I’d have canceled.
I like you! Unretouched photo of morning face.
Note that I love you all and want you safe and healthy. If you think I’m talking about you, know that I understand where you’re coming from, which is from concern for my well being. I appreciate all you readers, wherever you land on the precautions continuum.
* I realize that people choosing to take few precautions do endanger others. I’ve seen the results in my community. I still can’t MAKE people who disagree with public health policy make different choices.
My mental image of myself is some tomboy wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and boots. My actual self keeps wearing a lot of jewelry, growing my nails (not at the moment), and messing with my hair. It’s been so many colors and shapes. But at least I’m now going for a color found in humans.
It’s blazing white.
No not platinum blonde. White. Icy white. It looks kind of butch, right? Tell me yes. I am going for a neutral look. Why? I like it. But I have the girly option at any time!
The good news is I don’t have to indulge in fancy hair often. My roots didn’t look all that bad before I went in. So, twice a year I can look like the human version of Carlton and Gracie Lou, our whitest dogs.
Pre-cut root examination.
Kathleen just reminded me that self care is important. And it is. I actually feel a bit better today. Even pretty in my gender neutral way.
Part of that is thanks to y’all. Your support has helped! Tell me, what’s your favorite self care activity? Mine is HAIR.
Most of my life, I’ve done a lot of fancy knitting. But, lately, with all the other things weighing on my mind, simple stuff has been better. The past few things I’ve made would show that (I’ll share at the bottom of this post). I have found that simple, comfort knitting is a great thing to add to my coping with crisis mode toolbox.
(What else is in the toolbox you ask? Well, if you look in the comments of yesterday’s post, you’ll find some great suggestions by a fellow blogger, Julia, that include what I do: healthy snacks, exercise, get out in the light, enjoy cute animals, good music, etc.)
So, since I inadvertently left my current project AND the shawl I was going to finish off at the ranch, I started the little blue shawl I mentioned on Tuesday. Only, it’s not so little anymore. Apparently, my fingers have needed to knit, and my mind has needed to concentrate just a little on something pleasant to give itself a rest.
It has grown so much that I need to get longer needles when I get back to the ranch. This makes it look like a mushroom or a hat.
I’ve knitted up a storm each evening, while watching bland television shows, mostly about cute little animals on Animal Planet Wild. To take your mind off current events, a little Dr. Pol works wonders.
You can see the start of the lace pattern, which gets bigger and bigger as the shawl grows.
I felt confident enough to add some spice to the shawl, so have have thrown in some lattice lace. Yes, it’s making holes, but no, I don’t have to look at a pattern to do it. I just add one yarn over and decrease to each side, which is easy to spot the right place to do. I’m experienced enough to do a left-leaning decrease on the right side of the shawl, and vice versa.
For the tree readers who understood the previous paragraph, here are some ugly decreases.
The decreases aren’t all that attractive, but this thing is mostly wool and will block out. Since I’m not using lace-weight or floofy mohair yarn, it’s not exactly a traditional shawl anyway. It’s gonna be warm for whoever ends up wearing it.
Anita dared me to put a picture of my evening ensemble, in which I actually went out to walk the dog, and ran into a bunch of neighbors. I was obviously feeling like I looked.
If I didn’t have to lead a meeting at the happy hour of 8 am, I’d still be asleep now, because that felt good last night. I’m feeling well enough to send out some strength to my lovely family, my dear friends, and all of you who are facing challenges and keeping going!
Oh yeah, here are the two bland projects I made the last couple of years. One is a rectangle. Zzz.
I think this was supposed to be part of a top. I gave up.
I don’t have a photo of this finished, because Lee’s brother took it.
The Hermits' Rest 