daily life – Page 91 – The Hermits' Rest

Ups, Downs, and In-Betweens

Life is rolling along here in scenically rural Milam County, Texas. And its population is getting sicker. There are only 25,000-ish people in this county, so our ten COVID-19 cases are a lot. It was NOT good news to find out yesterday that one person who got sick worked at the local Dairy Queen. We’ve gotten take-out from there during our confinement.

Oops. This has led Kathleen to declare that we bring lunches from home from now on. No one has disagreed.

Now, an important point to make here is that we have the best Dairy Queen possible here. It’s in a modern, new building. It’s clean. They pay well above minimum wage and have employees who’ve been there many years. The staff have all been briefed on precautions to take. And the owner, Robert Mayfield, immediately closed the store so that they can disinfect it from top to bottom and be sure that it’s safe (and that the workers there have a chance to quarantine and stay safe, themselves).

An example of Judge Young’s weekly newspaper articles.

Our County Judge, Steve Young, has been doing a heroic job going on the radio, doing Facebook Live, and otherwise staying in touch with the people here, urging them to not gather in large groups, wear masks if working with the public or out in public, and to stay the heck home. We’re all really proud of the work he and our Health Department are doing.

But, it takes actual cooperation to prevent the spread of disease. No one at the hardware store, serving the public, was wearing a mask this morning. No one at the gas station where I got fuel this morning was wearing a mask or gloves other than me. I am NOT gonna touch a credit card machine with my hands! I also have a very clean credit card now.

It’s good to have your own company hand sanitizers spread everywhere you go, so you can clean your credit cards and such.

I know Cameron is not alone. There are people everywhere who believe themselves immortal or invulnerable or just don’t give a shit who are wandering around like nothing has changed. Now, I’m not referring to people who have no access to masks or gloves and have to be out so their families don’t starve; I know isolation and protection is a privilege. I’m talking about people who feel perfectly comfortable putting other people’s lives in danger by their choices. Who knows how many innocent folks with underlying conditions that predispose them to having a bad case of the virus these people will kill in the name of their personal freedom?

Happy thoughts, yeah.

I Said There Would Be Some “Ups” in This Post

Yes, I did. I was looking at myself on Zoom yesterday (it’s hard NOT to look at yourself) and realized I looked as bad as I felt. So, last night I re-colored my hair for the first time since early March. It’s now orange with some pink highlights. (My next hair appointment isn’t for another month, at least, so plenty of time to wash out color by then.)

I put on makeup and lipstick today, added my sparkly yellow shoes, and I donned my new Hearts Homes and Hands lab coat. I look all professional and up-beat, and I’m hoping that will spread to my mood and attitude. So far, it’s helped. If I have to take things one step at a time, at least they will be sparkly steps!

Here you can see my lab coat. It reminds me of the one I had in grad school to keep chalk off my clothes, just like my mentor, Georgia, wore.

A Little Pope News That’s In-Between

Chris is really close to getting the first two offices completely done, other than installing the barn door between them. He has been working on trim all week. There is a LOT involved in doing trim, which is sorta sad, since when it’s well done, it blends into the background.

The doorway between the two rooms will NOT blend into the background. It’s darned bright and cheerful, especially on Lee’s side!

Another thing that is taking a while is that they have to make dozens and dozens of shims to go behind the metal to trim windows on the tin walls. And, well, the house isn’t all level, so many shims are needed elsewhere. Easton spent an entire day cutting shims. Now, that sounds fun. Or does it?

Without shims, this trim would stick out from the wall, because the metal has bump-outs.

The plan is to get the remaining two rooms all cleaned up and move the supplies needed to finish the rest of the downstairs over there. We can’t paint the ceilings or refinish the floors if there are wood and tools all over the place!

So…even though we remain sort of dazed and confused, my plan is to dazzle with my shiny hair, shoes, watch band…anything cheerful!

One Day at a Time

That’s how I’m getting by right now. How about you? I celebrated finishing that 40-day project by not writing anything yesterday. I was blissfully involved in a work project that takes all my concentration and passes time quickly, which was a real relief, but left no time for blogging here. Everyone needs an occasional break.

I’ll just keep fiddling while the boat goes down. At least the sunset’s pretty.

As if the days didn’t blur together badly enough these days, I’m in a holding pattern on lots of things right now. Just taking one step at a time is not only all I’m able to do, but the right thing to do right now. I’ll get back to figuring out the future plans and options later, when my head’s clearer (all my stuff is just related to various jobs and their various stresses, nothing horrible).

Randomness and Birds

It’s been nice to have Kathleen doing “stress cooking.” I like it when someone cooks to take their mind off things. She made me the best baked chicken on a bed of collard greens last night. I truly love collard greens (weird southern girl thing), and these may be the best I ever ate. I’m so grateful that she and Chris are here helping me and Lee out right now.

The spring air is making everyone sniffly here, but it’s really been nice to see what kinds of creatures are doing their regular things. My friend Donna, who is not a tech person, wrote a little blog on this topic, if you want some more nice photos. I’m really happy to see her getting out of her comfort zone.

I’m not sure what kind of moth this little guy will grow up to be, but wow, what a pretty caterpillar!

In fact, just this morning I was thrilled to see that bluebirds are nesting in the dead tree by the road again this year. There used to be woodpeckers in there, so I guess they made a nice house. The phoebes are nesting in our garage and spend most of their days screeching PHOEBE at each other and eating bugs. They are a lot of fun to watch.

The phoebes ate dozens of bugs while I was on the phone at my ranch office last evening.

The bug population is doomed around the Hermits’ Rest, or at least less awful than it could be, thanks to the handy birds. The scissortails are back at work, and there’s nothing prettier than watching a male go after a bug. The swallows are in full force, as well as those phoebes. I watch the little sparrows go after bugs every afternoon when I go feed the horses. Just think how many mosquitoes and other bugs we’d have after all this rain if we didn’t have our avian buddies!

Producing pollen this week is the prickly ash. Go tree, go!

Today I’ll head out and see what new is blooming. I’ve seen a couple of winecups, and we have our eyes on the dewberries. Yum. Back to basics. It’s good for you.

Share your coping mechanisms if you wish!

Who Is NOT Experiencing Anticipation?

Sure, the UU Lent word for today is anticipation, because it’s the traditional day when Christians anticipate the culmination of the passion/story/tradition of Easter. But really, who isn’t anticipating a lessening of the very necessary restrictions we are dealing with right now? More on that later.

First, it’s still spring. Resurrection is all around us. Here in Cameron, lilies are blooming everywhere, butterflies are making their appearance, and the birds and bees are everywhere (especially when I’m trying to drink a beverage on the new patio break area we made).

Mrs. Finch is annoyed that Chris and I are watching her work on the nest. She’s also anticipating those little chirpers.

I keep coming back to it, but anticipation of the familiar, regular, slow and sure changing of the seasons has been really helpful to me the past month or two. Be sure to look out and see what’s changing outside your window – it can help.

What ARE We Anticipating?

I’ve been idly wondering (okay, maybe not so idly wondering) what’s coming up in the next few months. This morning I read two articles that hit me like a big ole brick wall from across the street at the Pope Residence.

First, Kathleen shared this article from the Houston Chronicle about the phases of coping with the pandemic. Gerald Parker says we’re in Phase 2, mitigation, but there are two more phases to come that are just different kinds of mitigation. Next will be containment, where we start things back up a bit, but remain cautious, since we will not yet have a vaccine, but hopefully will have better treatment. We will be much more careful about sanitation and isolating sick people

This is how I feel right now. That all these invisible things are swarming around me. I also was splattered with paint yesterday when I made this.

Once there is a vaccine for people who believe in such things, the virus will be much less prevalent, but never go away, just like the flu that comes every year and kills people. That will be the new normal, according to Parker, anyway.

I thought it was a little discouraging, but my friend Jean, who has a background in such things, has another perspective:

Actually, it is kind of encouraging. We’ve been executing a plan for this and it’s on schedule. I may not like it, but this contingency has been planned for, some of the problems we are seeing were recognized as such but not acted on (not surprising by the way — I was responsible for our organization’s shelter in place plan before I retired, and there were things I knew we weren’t ready for because it was fiscally not feasible to do), but our national strategy is working. Had we not had a workable plan for this, we would be in a far worse place now.
Jean Schara of Philosophical Meanderings, Too

I’m glad to read this other perspective. It makes me feel like we’re all helping.

Next, let’s talk about spin. Here’s an article that has been shared all over my Facebook today, which pessimistically predicts that as soon as we are all out of our homes and those extremely creepy commercials about how companies love us in our confinement are over, the advertising/marketing engine will gear up to try to get us to forget all this ever happened. Talk about Orwellian dystopia coming to life. Argh.

Let’s take a break and watch some streaky clouds. They look like they’re in a hurry to get out of Cameron. I don’t blame them.

The author, Julio Vincent Gambuto, calls it the ultimate gaslighting (and let me tell you, as someone who experiences it often, I do NOT like gaslighting). He predicts we’ll be hearing how all the things we are directly experiencing right now will be minimized. This gives me the shivers. I am not sure this will actually happen to the extent Gambuto claims it will (after all, the article is on Medium.com, which does not fact check), but now that I know about the possibility, I’ll be anticipating it and keep my eyes and ears open for marketing gaslighting.

Well, let’s change the subject. I anticipate the end of UU Lent tomorrow. I’ll have to think of my own topics! Don’t worry. I can do it.

The result of yesterday’s painting and scraping is ALL the matching doors are now a matching color.

By the way, I said I’d write about something today, but I decided not to, since it had to do with corporate practices, and I currently work for a corporation. I’ll follow their social media guidelines like a good corporate citizen and go paint, scrape, and clean some more.

There’s Always Something to Be Grateful For

Yes, today’s word is gratitude. You knew that one was coming, right. Those of us working on our attitudes are told by all our self-help books, tapes to keep gratitude journals, because it actually makes us feel better at a brain chemistry level. I know my spouse does it every day and it’s been really good for him.

I don’t write a gratitude journal, but I’ve been practicing just “noticing” where I am and what is going on, often through the day. This just leads to gratitude welling up in me. Corny as it may seem, I’m often just grateful for the privilege of being here on this earth, able to live and continue to learn every day.

Just noticing where I was. Grateful for the ever-entertaining ducks of Cameron.

Today, I awoke from the first decent sleep I’ve had in a while, looked out at my chickens, who got through a pretty bad storm last night, and was glad to see that my sadness of the past few days had moved on to a new phase. The first song I heard this morning said it well:

Let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day
Raglan Road, Irish folk song

I’m practicing being grateful even for the stumbling blocks and unexpected changes life brings, which I’ll talk about more in the next post. Right now, I just want to share how grateful I am for my support system, including these precious beings, who have really improved their behavior lately.

Lee is ready for when we are allowed to open our office and need to wear scrubs!

And I’m grateful for my family and close friends (thanks Anita and Mike) for listening to my vents yesterday. I feel very well cared for, with Chris sharing his stories of similar things in his life, and Lee jumping right into lists for planning our future. With this network of support, I’ll get by.

We all deserve a support network when things get weird, and by gosh, things are weird for everyone right now, and lots of us have other things piling on top of the isolation. If I can EVER be a listening ear for YOU, I’m here. I want to pay forward the kindnesses for which I am so grateful.

Your thoughts are always welcome, friends.

Calgon, Where Are You? Can We Transcend This Madness?

Today’s will be a short blog, if you can imagine that. Things have sort of taken a downward turn in my non-pandemic life, so I will need to deal with that. I have lots of support, and I was really moved yesterday when the support I needed came from so many parts of my life, and there’s where the UU Lent word for the day, transcend, comes in.

I realized that I have support that transcends all boundaries, if I only remember it’s out there and reach out. Those 128 likes and 93 commenters include people I’ve known since I was a child, people I’ve never met, elders, youth, people I disagree and agree with, and people from:

Family
High school
College
Grad school
My first job outside school
All my previous and current jobs: Akibia, Dell, Planview
Friends from when my kids were in school
La Leche League
Unitarian Universalists
FortuneBuilder friends (real estate)
Master Naturalists
Email lists founded long before Facebook
Knitters and crocheters
Musicians
Community theater
Neighbors from Austin, Round Rock, and Cameron

I am sure we all have a varied network, even when we feel alone. I am imagining them lifting me up in support, so that I can transcend these mundane roadblocks, personal issues, and unwise decisions made that we have no control over. Community support is vital right now.

The earth abides. The harvest goes on. Nature transcends human problems.

Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away. I put this t-shirt on this morning, and it turned out to be quite appropriate. (It’s a Slaid Cleaves album title.)

I know blog readers are also here to support me. And we are here to support each other. I’ve been sending out so much empathy to people I know who have lost loved ones during this time when we can’t gather together. I’ve been sending strength to those of us for whom this new world is scary and brings out their anxieties and depression. I’m sending calm out to all the people I know who are trying to work and school their worried children. And of course, super duper vibes are going out to people who can’t work right now and need to keep their lives together.

This too, shall pass (I think that’s the message my t-shirt is trying to convey).

Let’s all send out what love and light we have to spare, while taking in what others are sending us. Maybe that will keep us all able to move forward.

Contemplating the meaning of life and transcendence on a Maundy Thursday.

Thank you all. Supportive messages for me and all the rest of us blog readers and their circles are welcome.

Old Tin for an Old House

We’ve been waiting for a long time to be able to share this latest upgrade to the Pope Residence. Chris had torn down an old tin building in Dewitt County for some friends, and saved the metal for some future project.

Notice anything new? The front door is red! The other doors will soon be red, too. Along with the chair cushions, the house looks much more festive.

He asked us if we could maybe use that on the Pope Residence, and everyone got all excited about it. We didn’t want to put too much rusty tin in the office, but just enough to accent the rustic look we have going with the exposed brick, etc.

A pop of teal! It will go with Kathleen’s rug and other accessories.

Now that all the paint is done except the archway, which Nicole just painted teal on Kathleen’s side (it’s her favorite color) and the blue ceilings, it was time to bring that metal over and see how it could be used.

As soon as they started putting the tin up on the wall where our “break room” cabinets will be, I got excited. Suddenly, the hallway looked “finished” to me.

It was really fun to watch Chris and Easton putting the metal up. There are so many different textures and colors, between the rust and other signs of wear, it looks like it’s always been there.

It’s especially lovely going up the stairs. It looks so great as a bridge between the two wall colors. It definitely makes a statement, and makes the stairway look less like a new addition.

Both bathrooms also got tin installed, and it tones down their intense colors enough, I think.

I like the rusty areas in my bathroom.
The deviled egg color looks good with the warm metal.

In all, I think I am personally in love with the tin. It gave me a much-needed moment of happiness after a long day of meetings and hard conversations.

Watching the work through my office window.

What has lifted your spirits a bit today?

Resilience. Can We Do It?

Right about now, lots of folks are finding their resilience tested. It’s another really appropriate word for UU Lent. Every day we try our best to bounce back, face the day, move forward, and support those who need our support. It ain’t easy, especially for my family and friends who’ve lost loved ones, have sick friends, have lost their income, or are trying to teach children AND do the job they still have.

Am I feeling resilient today? Not really.

Some people are born more resilient than others. I’ve read all those studies about how some people will thrive no matter what circumstances they are thrown into. You hear stories of people who have overcome really sad situations in their youth to become amazing contributors to the well-being of others.

Others of us aren’t resilient by nature at all. Still, with support and care, many of these folks can learn coping skills and do very well in life.

The rest of us are somewhere in between, and do better or worse due to our environment and other support systems. It’s the support systems, I think, that matter the most, which is why I’m grateful to all the people around me who are supportive.

I’m pretty sure the hackberry tree will be around long after the rest of us. It has resilience and then some!

Input

My friend Pam shared the types of resilience she’s working on, in a comment that doesn’t show up on the Instagram photo. They are too helpful not to share. Here’s what she said:

8 forms of capital I have been working for quite some time to strengthen my resilience in. Some days are easier than others. Time, social, cultural, emotional, knowledge, material, living and financial are the 8- sending you peace and love and light today Suna💕
Chris Martenson, PhD and Adam Taggart in their 2015 book, Prosper! How to Prepare for the Future and Create a World Worth Inheriting

I love getting helpful feedback with resources to help out, so thanks a lot, Pam!

Nature and Resilience

One of the things we learn about in our Master Naturalist training is how resilient things are out there in nature. We learn how forests recover from fire, how ecosystems can regain their balance once important species are re-introduced (wolves, reindeer), and so on.

I hope the toad makes it. Nice to get comments on a post!

We also learn about the most fragile members of ecosystems, like frogs, who just can’t take all the rapid change. The most resilient plants and animals get to keep going (why we have so many medium-sized mammals and so few giant dinosaurs now).

I guess one day spiders will rule the earth. Phidippus arisonensis.

It’s just hard to watch entire groups of plants and animals going away because of the actions of humans. We have re-shaped the planet in so many ways, with our agriculture, selective breeding of animals, depleting resources like trees, and taxing the ecosystem with our large population.

I once read that plagues happened when there were too many people in a place. Is Nature trying to tell us something? Can we stay strong and get through to better (or at least different) times?

Stay resilient, friends.

Bloom Where You’re Planted

Those of you who haven’t been quarantined your whole lives have probably heard this saying before. It’s the first thing that popped into my head when I saw that today’s UU Lent word is bloom.

Let’s see how to do that. Image by *@dmotif via Twenty20*.

It being spring in glorious central Texas, you see blossoms everywhere. They look especially vibrant this year, since it’s been cloudy or rainy most of the time, and there is a lot of very green grass to contrast with it. I don’t think they are what I’m going to talk about today.

Bloom is a verb. When a plant blooms, it puts all its energy into reaching out to other plants, insects, birds, and animals. It sends pollen out to make seeds. Then the females put even more energy into taking what they got and making fruit.

That’s how I see the idea of blooming where you’re planted. Just like a plant, we don’t get to choose where we do our growing. Some of us get nice rich soil and lots of nurturing, others of us get placed on the sidewalks of life.

Right now a lot of us are planted in an isolated place. I’m even in a basement, for heaven’s sake. What is helping me a lot is taking the situation I’m in and learning from it. While I’m all cozy in here, I’m thinking of ways to be a better person, do my work better, and contribute to my community.

Blue-eyed grass is one of my favorite signs of spring at the ranch.

I’m planted right here, Mommy. I’ll bloom later, okay? I’m also metaphorically exhausted.

When I bloom, I’ll be able to make the best possible flower, and we can all do that, no matter where we’re starting from. You take what you’re given and make the best of it, or not, I guess.

Let’s hope that the fruit we eventually make from all the introspecting, preparation, and hard work we are doing to grow and bloom will be sweet, nutritious, and strong, so we can plant more ideas.

I’m metaphorically worn out now. Are you? What do you think about when you think of blooming?

Don’t Cry Now

Yeah. Don’t listen to that advice. It is perfectly appropriate to cry now. It’s just that when I saw that today’s UU Lent prompt was cry, the first thing I thought of was this Linda Rondstadt song.

I don’t cry anymore. Right around the time I started feeling better about myself, I stopped crying almost completely. I’ve teared up a couple of times, both from happiness and sadness, but I’ve only really cried twice that I can remember in the past year.

When my precious Brody got hit by a car and died, I certainly cried, as one does when they lose a family member. I found out that another heeler I know got hit and killed on the same road last week. Just punches you in the gut. You try to keep them in the fence, but they sure have a drive to chase.

My constant companion, at least for a long time. I think he’s standing in the same spot as Brody in the previous picture.

The last time I cried was just before we left on that ill-timed recent vacation. Once again, Penney had chased Vlassic off my bed. He’d already spent a couple of nights at my brother-in-law’s RV, and I’d missed him. I completely broke down at the thought of losing my little best friend, and a huge wave of grief took over for a while. I do still have issues with feeling deserted, especially when I’m feeling weaker. Having the hole in my soul from being deserted by the radiant Kynan (as his spouse calls him), I was vulnerable.

I’m okay now. I think Vlassic is safer and happier next door in the RV, and I get to see him nearly every day when we feed chickens and horses together. Jim needs a little friend, too. My generous higher self is dealing with it now.

Why Don’t I Cry?

I wish I knew. as a child and young adult, I had a very quick crying trigger. I was a “sensitive” one, and very easily hurt by name calling, bullying, and criticism (deserved or not). It’s one reason I tried to be so good as a child. If I was good, no one would yell at me or criticize me, and I wouldn’t start to cry, which would lead to more name-calling and being laughed at.

I’d always cry during difficult conversations or when I was feeling strongly about something. It made me so angry at myself when I wanted to be rational and strong, but I’d start to cry, even when the rest of me was trying to make a point or be articulate. No doubt I drove my romantic partners crazy with that. And that’s why I tried to avoid confrontation so much, because if I started crying, I’d always look weak.

I may have cried enough for a lifetime during the years surrounding my divorce from my kids’ dad. Maybe I used up all my tears on all my personal drama, much of which I made for myself, I now admit.

One thing’s for sure, crying at the drop of a hat was one of my least favorite habits/traits. It was harder for me to forgive myself for crying the times I was “let go” at jobs than over losing the jobs themselves. I am still pissed off at myself for letting that awful man who was jargoning and biz-speaking his way through running La Leche League into the ground see me cry, and for letting that absolutely horrid Dean at UT see me beg to keep a job I hated (because I thought I’d lose my kids with no income). Blech.

But, I don’t cry now. I occasionally get sad and I get angry, but I don’t cry, not even healing tears, like Vicki refers to above. I think crying when appropriate (say you have had just about enough of a certain pandemic) is healthy, but I just don’t. My only guess is that the antidepressant I take has muted my crying trigger.

Has that happened to any of you who admit to taking an antidepressant? I’m curious. I can still feel quite happy and quite annoyed (ask the people who live at my house about the annoyed part).

Thanks to the 100+ people who reacted to this post, and all of you who commented.

Please, if things get to be too much for you, let out those tears. If you need to vent, please do so, and don’t beat yourself up for venting about things that are trivial. No one will judge you for it, certainly not me. I’m happy to be there to listen, too, and hope that there are those of you out there who would listen non-judgmentally to me, too.

We’ll be together at our Austin house again, my friend.

Let’s muddle through together! And wipe those tears (on your own mask or tissue, please).

Have Mercy. We’re Doing Our Best

For some reason, I seem to do worse blogging about these “churchy” words like grace and mercy than I do with stuff like rain. But today I got mercy. All I’ve got done so that we all deserve some mercy right now, from each other and our spiritual leaders.

Hmm, I don’t think this is the right holiday.

Oh yeah, Palm Sunday greetings to my Christian friends.

Now I’ll tell you about the mercy I received today, which was that kind Easton saw me struggling to build our new patio furniture for the balcony at the Pope house. He made all four chairs in the time it took me to make two tables. How merciful.

Little rocking chairs. And a tiny table.

I did manage to build rolling drawers and a filing cabinet for my office all by myself. When Chris gave me an electric screwdriver I sped up.

I need help getting the drawers in. But I built it!

I got matching bookcases for my office and Lee’s. They still need to get built, and will require two people. We must be getting close to move-in time if I’m building furniture!

Drawers already in use holding my printer.

So, I’m looking for stories about mercy, if you have any, because I’m all out of stories. I do like patio furniture, though.