daily life – Page 79 – The Hermits' Rest

With Friends Anything Is Fun

Today is Anita’s last day with me in Utah. I just have to say it’s been great. One of the best things about hanging out with your long-time friends is that you can enjoy yourselves without doing much at all. We did a lot of nothing this week.

It was a bit bright outside, so our selfie didn’t come out perfect.

We did have a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong, but since we didn’t have access to a car most of the time she was here, we spent a lot of time just hanging around the Canyons Village resort area. All the walking was a blast, and it sure used up a lot of energy. That meant we got to enjoy a lot of food, too! Thank goodness the pho and ramen restaurant finally opened, so we could eat there!

Anita, hungry for a beef bowl. Our friend the red crane is always present.

The shopping and sight-seeing was also fun, and we sure were grateful for the family visitors for taking us around. Yesterday we did a bit more shopping, and Anita got some great coral Zuni earrings. I’m so glad she got to have fun, while Kathleen and I were drooling over a huge jewelry selection AND Navajo blankets. Not bad ones!

That is one gorgeous building in downtown Park City.

My favorite thing she got is a huge cactus-shaped birdhouse thing. It’s going to be her “travel pillow” so she can get it on the plane. It is stuffed with excellent newspapers from Nepal!

Our new cactus friend. Note that I just HAD to buy some flowers to liven this place up.

The best part was just hanging around in the condo, eating our random foods, watching the snow, the birds and the one giant black cat that hangs around here. It was so good having someone to watch election coverage with and talk about things.

And of course, the four seasons of Schitt’s Creek were a blast. Neither of us had laughed so much in a long time.

This is where we stopped. No watching until I get back to Austin!

She got out while the weather was still great, which is good, since a snowstorm is a-brewing. I’m sure the rest of us will figure out something fun this evening, though!

The intent of this post is just to say treasure your friends, and make the most of times you get to spend together. Usually Anita and I are both working a lot, so just hanging out was a real treat. Relaxing, truly relaxing, is rare, and I am glad we got to do it together. Only she and I would laugh when I pompously declare that I just realized that for every mountain, there is a valley (that’s after I looked at a team photo in the newspaper stuffed in the cactus and wondered where people played soccer in Nepal, with all those mountains).

Tell your friends you care about them! (Hey, friends, I care about you!) Write me!

Hiking Late in the Day

We didn’t get out until around 4pm yesterday. That meant the sun was going down and the snow melt in the paths was starting to freeze. But we persevered.

We did find a snowman, so at least someone else had fun.

We walked along dirt roads and golf paths, and it was not bad. We were rewarded with some beautiful views!

Close as we can get to a sunset view, since we were on the east side of the mountain.

I’ve noticed my breathing is getting better and better, so I must be getting used to the altitude. I’m still enjoying how much exercise I’m getting and know it’s helping me deal with challenges that pop up.

Anita and I really enjoyed our day of indulgence, though. Usually I want to go and go during vacation, but we decided to just rest and indulge. We watched two movies (the new Borat movie and Knives Out, both funny).

I even made all the food yesterday. There was a great chef salad for lunch and soup and biscuits for dinner. With all the COVID cases rising, I’m probably not going to eat out much more.

There’s the sun. I could not get the snow to look white in this light.

We spent all night, and I mean all night, binge watching the television series Schitt’s Creek, which I’d been wanting to see for a long time. Anything with Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara in it must be seen by me. I am also quite a fan of Chris Elliott, so I just sat there and laughed for hours. Why not? We can get all serious again in a few days.

Today I have a couple phone calls, but I predict more hiking in peace and television fun. Safety first.

Laying Low

Sometimes you just want to stay cozy. It was really cold this morning. So Anita and I are watching movies. I am knitting.

I am not doing well with gauge. Oops. Haven’t knitted in a while.

The knitting is less ugly than it was. It’s a table runner. It will block nicely.

It’s nice to just relax. Even though there have been some glitches today, I’m just chilling. Hygge. Yep. Peace.

Got the computer hooked up to the TV, which shows very pretty screen savers.

Life is boring! We’re staying out of COVID in Utah. That’s just fine. I feel lucky to have a vacation with peace and movies. It could be worse. Maybe Thursday we can get out and drive around!

Yes. Exercise in the Cold Is Fun. So Is Personal Growth.

Where did the real Suna go? I’ve been thoroughly enjoying getting lots and lots of exercise since it got cold way up here in the mountains. Like, I volunteer to climb up snowy hills. I pant a bit and go higher. I stand around and think about going even higher or driving to a better hiking place (we may rent a car tomorrow and go somewhere).

When the sun came out it was so beautiful.

Today we went to get more groceries, which was also fun. If there’s a blizzard I’ll be fine. And Anita got lemon for her morning beverage! We’re good! Then we took yet another walk. I just can’t stop. I think I’d never seen so much dry powdery snow before. The crunch crunch crunch is really invigorating! It’s even addicting.

When you get away from condos, it’s nice here.

I think I may need to learn to criss-country ski at some point, though my legs are already yelling at me.

Folks, I never liked exercise as much as I do now. I wonder if taking turmeric and CBD oil has made my body feel better, so I enjoy moving more? Now physical exertion is fun.

Also, though, I never liked being out in the cold much (sorry, Illinois years). I’m from a warm place. What’s up with that?

Plus snowflakes! They are so pretty. Yes, I took a picture of snow.

In Illinois, it was often SO cold and windy, and I had to stand around waiting for the bus, or walk a mile to teach a class too many times when my breath was freezing as it came out. This week, it’s cold, but really pleasant. I’m glad I’ve had this experience.

All this glee isn’t something I’ve felt in so long. I get that way in Texas when I’m with Apache or out looking at new plants. The key really seems to be living in the moment. Just being present and experiencing what’s going on right around you truly brings joy.

What a lesson at such a good time! Most of my life I’ve read about living in the moment. I’ve tried to do it. This year has been hard, so hard, but I think I’ve benefited by making so much progress on being here, now.

What’s out there that can invigorate you? How are you growing in this season of transition?

No Advice from Me

I woke up this morning and the world was still here. I still had work to do. The sun was shining, and the moon was still up.

As I read my daily email updates, checked out social media, and finally decided to listen to some news, I began to read and hear lots and lots of advice from people for how to deal with feelings today. A lot of it was very good, and once again, I appreciated words from Maria Shriver.

from the midweek edition of her Sunday Paper, November 4, 2020

And there were lots of other people sharing advice to breathe and acknowledge your feelings. I think we all need that, regardless of your feelings about the US election. We are still a country that is very divided, so I intend to continue to send thoughts for peace and calm, remember that I’m resilient, and keep living in the moment.

If cats and dogs can love each other, despite their differences, maybe we can, too. Photo by *@daniela_coppolino via Twenty20*.

I’m not going to tell YOU how to act, what to think, or what to feel. I feel overwhelmed by all the advice, myself. Please do what works for you. That’s all my advice.

Leaning on my friends and those close to me is about all I have. This is from the trail yesterday.

Know that lots of bad, awful, and disheartening events have occurred throughout the history of this country, but regular people still just want to live their lives in peace and safety. I’m remembering that.

A Thousand Points of Typing

In addition to successfully working all day from the condo, I got a little note from my buds at WordPress. I feel as high as these here mountains.

Crop out a lot of road work, and you can see beauty here!

I know I feel compelled to blog every day, but it sure has added up. It really helps me think things through, and I prefer writing to talking (so I won’t be joining the great Franklin Habit and vlogging).

I also feel compelled to take pictures and share them. Someone even said they like that!

Thanks for all your input and thoughtfulness in your responses. I’m looking forward to another THOUSAND posts. Or maybe I’ll find a way to earn money by writing.

Um, Hey

Wait a minute. I DO earn money by writing. I guess I go to so many meetings that I forget I’m a technical writer/editor. So, if I want to blog as a hobby, I can. I give myself permission! But, I may knit some more. Maybe. Yarn is coming.

I’ll be online tomorrow. Feel free to check in.

Hints for High Altitude Traveling

Oh yes, I am enjoying being all by myself up here in some mountains that are hard to see because of all the resorts and construction. But it’s wonderfully quiet in my condo, and I have the windows open for fresh mountain air! Since they knew I’d be here for three weeks they put me at the back of the resort, with no next-door neighbors and as far as humanly possible from building noise, other than the occasional backup beeper (supplies are kept next to the building). But, it isn’t bad, at all.

Some funny things have occurred to me, though, so for those of you who, like me until yesterday, have never traveled anywhere this high up, I have a few hints, mostly to do with opening things.

First: all the containers of creams and liquids that you bring with you will remain on lower pressurization. I found this out in my ride from the airport, when my hand sanitizer ejaculated all over me. I had some very antiseptic pants!

Things that splatted all over the place since I got here.

It didn’t stop there. I went to put on hand cream, but did I use the one here at the condo? No, I used the one I brought from Austin. SPLAT.

At least my toothpaste was fine. But, then I went to apply my makeup this morning. The moisturizer is sort of thick, so I was able to control its oozing. But, then my foundation. The expensive foundation. I think I lost a month’s worth of that stuff. It would not stop, so I crammed the lid back on, and don’t look forward to tomorrow. And yes, I wear makeup. Gotta look good on Zoom, you know.

But the good stuff!

I’m being careful and not over-exercising, so I won’t get altitude sickness. ANd I’m taking in a lot of liquids, like the instructions say. Those are my other pieces of advice.

But I did take a little walk around the area. I had been concerned that I hadn’t seen any wildlife at all since I got here, but the walk helped a lot with that. I only saw two birds, but they were both very friendly, so I got reasonable photos of a magpie and a mountain chickadee.

A magpie on a solar panel and a chickadee in an evergreen.

And when I found the ski lift entrance, I got to see what was left of some nice wildflowers, and poop that is either from deer or elk. Good. I didn’t take a picture, but it looked like big deer poop.

Thistles, a ski life, and a little snow.

I didn’t get too tired, but my exercise app is going to be happy. With all the hills, I’m getting lots of “stairs” and heartrate-boosting effort.

Screw Up? Laugh at Yourself!

Like I said yesterday, I crashed hard and pretty much wasn’t good for anything yesterday afternoon. That became patently obvious as the day dragged on. Mistakes were made. Errors occurred. At least I managed to leave work, put the right kind of gas in my car, find my hair salon and get my hair cut safely (I like how much care they take there).

In good stuff, I got a nice postcard from a random person in Illinois asking me to vote. I am impressed by how many people have done volunteer work this year that’s not totally annoying.

But I’m not firing on all cylinders still, thanks to a combination of really intense work, coronavirus rates going back up, and US politics worries. Heh, I typed that and my stomach did a pang. My stress goes there.

What I Did

There was a board meeting for Master Naturalists last night, which I set up, myself. I’d made the agenda and sent it out. When I made it, I saw that there were instructions up there to do the meeting as a phone call. “Ah,” I thought, “I don’t have to do another Zoom meeting.” Later in the day I told someone how it would be easy to find the meeting, just dial the phone.

The meeting started, and half the board wasn’t there. Hmm. Then a half hour later, we got lots of requests for why the Zoom meeting hadn’t started. Well, it’s a PHONE meeting, said those of us who read the agenda.

Yep. It happens. Image from *@clairegran via Twenty20*.

The joke was on ME. I had actually set up a Zoom meeting at 6:30 AND a phone call at 6. I was so zonked when I set up the agenda, I couldn’t remember what I did when I set up the meeting. I’d left a whole bunch of people stranded. Perhaps my term as President will be a single term – I hear it’s popular.

UGH. We got everyone on the phone eventually, and I got to apologize many, many times, as each person felt compelled to inform us that they were waiting and waiting, and were SURE they’d done the right thing. They had. Everyone had done the right thing, depending on which set of my instructions they followed. While the agenda had phone instructions, they weren’t in bold or screaming to ignore the previous instructions, because I’d forgotten.

In the end everyone laughed. Or at least most people laughed. There are a lot of very serious Master Naturalists, and that is fine. I just know I look like a real doofus to them. But, hey, I’ve learned a lesson, which is what I am told I should do after messing up.

It Continues

Well, I DID need to update the watch OS. In Cameron I never have the Wi-Fi to do it.

Sigh. It turns out I actually declined my boss’s meeting request for today. That could explain why it wasn’t on my calendar. I kept wondering where that meeting went. I’m great at clicking the wrong thing on the phone!

Plus, I had this goal of getting back to Cameron at 10 so I could work from there the rest of the day. Nope, my watch insists on updating right this minute. It gave me time to blog, I guess.

Thank you all for reading this. Acknowledge your own humanity today by admitting that you screwed up, apologizing, and moving on. If you haven’t screwed up, don’t worry; you will. Stories of COVID-brain inspired mess-ups are welcome.

Energy Crash, Tumbleweed Stopped

All week I’ve felt like a tumbling tumbleweed, going from meeting to meeting, issue to issue, emotion to emotion. That’s made this week feel two weeks long.

No longer tumbling. That’s good, because I was getting vertigo.

Today I finished another Program Initiative Planning week at work (lots of meetings, lots and lots of them, all intense). I ate my delicious free lunch of stuffed acorn squash and came back to blog for the rest of lunch hour.

It’s obvious this is my desk. There is a LOT of red, orange and pink in there.

Instead, I realized I was just staring into space, listening to the high whistling sound made by the industrial air conditioning system, mesmerized by my keyboard and mouse. I only figured out my keyboard did this light stuff yesterday, at about the same time that I realized my mouse changed colors.

I hope you can see the mouse…

The Chinese are very creative, are they not? But, with no English instructions, I didn’t figure out this stuff until I looked online for how to get the mouse to work. The USB dongle thing was very well hidden. Anyway, this thing SHOULD keep me awake, shouldn’t it?

It’s all black and white, and I’m slumping into a puddle of gray.

But, the point is, I just crashed. I had nothing left. All the color is gone (other than the keyboard, this place where I’m working is nearly all black and white). That’s not good, since there is still work to do, so I hope that writing this will perk me back up! It’s very rare that I crash, since I’m one of those people who always has something to do, plus two or three back-up activities. I predict some more crashing in the near future. My brain is telling me I need to slow down and breathe.

Now, I DO meditate, faithfully. But, that’s more of an “activity” to me, because emptying my brain is doing something, at least to my busy brain. It’s my favorite part of the day, but that peace rarely creeps out into the rest of the day. Hmm, the meditation peace is active in some way. This exhaustion peace is empty in a totally inactive way. Like nothing. Meditating is something.

I need some clarity on this, so I’ll go back and think about it more. Or, I’ll spend another 15 minutes watching the keyboard.

Asking Questions to Build Community?

Lately I’ve varied the kinds of things I put on social media. Sometimes I share a thoughtful meme, sometimes I talk about how I’m feeling, sometimes I share a blog post, and other times I do a check-in, where I ask people a question.

Hey, now the hair on my avatar is exactly the right color.

By far the most engaging posts are ones that ask questions. Today, I was feeling a little bummed, so I asked people to share what the highlight of their day had been so far. I was delighted to see that by 6 pm it had close to 80 comments! I heard from so many people, some of whom I hadn’t heard from in a while.

Plus, conversations got started in the comments. I love it when I see my friends “talking to each other” thanks to a conversation starter from me. That may be my favorite aspect of the Facebook, conversations. I learn so much, and I am so often uplifted and encouraged when I read what my friends have to say.

I went to get a picture of random friends, and I was amused to see my most liberal friend right next to my most conservative friend (I’m not saying who’s who, because this selection has multiples of just about every kind of person). And they are both great people. I love that my friends are a mix of ages, locations, points of view, and dispositions.

In marketing, they always tell you to put a call to action on things you post (like, click, comment, please!). I am not all that great at that, though I do add a question to my blog posts when I sincerely want to know something. Marketing is SO not my thing, which is probably why I still only have a thousand followers and don’t get 40 WordPress likes every time I sneeze (I am guessing not being young, cute, and an “influencer” may also have something to do with it). I should be grateful that at least someone reads what a grumpy old Boomer with blue hair types! (I admit that I type mostly for me, anyway…it’s been said that I’m self centered…maybe a narcissist…I do stare in the mirror a lot.)<– humor.

But, seriously, the reason I’m here is to give YOU this little hint. If you want to hear from your friends and family ASK something! It works like crazy, and if you happen to have something you want to promote along with it, feel free (some of us do prefer subtle promotion that is not constant, though, just saying). People like to answer questions, it makes them feel like someone is actually interested in them (and in my case, I am!). This builds community, and it’s free PLUS you can do it from the comfort of wherever you happen to be!

So, what would you like to know?
What shall I ask next?
Your friend, Suna

What if you’d rather answer questions than ask them? There are two people I follow on Facebook, who ask great questions nearly every day: Joanna Fontaine Crawford and Jonathan K. Horstmann. One’s a UU minister and one’s a filmmaker/musician (both are parents of attractive children, ranging from babies to young adults). I’ll try to share others as I’m reminded of them. You can “meet” interesting folks by reading other people’s answers, too, and in these times, I’ll take any kind of uplifting human content I can get!

Reaching deep to find something uplifting here. Image by *@trac1 via Twenty20*.

Let me know if you have any questions you’d like me to ask, either here on the blog, or on Facebook (I don’t ask questions on Instagram). Not connected? Tell me you’re a blog reader, and I’ll be your friend unless you start spamming or attacking others!