daily life – Page 97 – The Hermits' Rest

Ghosts from the Past (good ones)

I’m not sure why this is the case, but when I was younger, I never looked back. When I left a place or an institution, I was really bad at maintaining ties. For example, I didn’t remain in touch with any friends from high school (other than my boyfriend, since he was with me in college and most of grad school) until the last few years. Facebook helped with that. And while I do have a couple of grad school friends, such as my favorite fellow student (that’s Steve H) and favorite professor (that’s Georgia M), I’ve lost touch with most people other than a random hello.

I lived here for four years, Murphree Hall. The room with the balcony was really cool. The Rathskeller was right across the road. Handy.

What about my four years of growth and learning at the University of Florida (where I never managed to see any of my high school friends who were there at the same time)? I have one, count ’em one, friend from my undergrad years. That’s Liz from Japanese class. Someone has to share those Swann-sensei memories with me.

That was true until this week, when I finally got back in touch with the only undergrad teacher I’d considered a friend. I’d thought about him often, through the years, and always had held him up as an example of how you really get educated in important things like social skills and political dialogue (that was drinking extremely cheap beer at the Rathskeller every week for three or four years). But, I hadn’t been in touch with him for a very long time, though I’d looked off and on.

Life Is Complicated: Fiber Arts Department

I can see why so many people I know are staying away from online communities, even though they provide such great ways to stay in touch, make new friends, and feel less isolated. It just seems IMPOSSIBLE to create a community where people treat each other with respect and dignity. Name calling and blaming seem to be the rule rather than the exception in today’s society in this country.

Case in point

I’m a member of a fiber arts community called Ravelry, which was founded in 2007. Back when I spent much of my time knitting, teaching knitting, and designing patterns, this was like a second home to me. I’m sure many of you readers feel the same, since I have so many knitting friends (before Ravelry we had some wonderful email lists, and some grumpy ones).

I’ve been very proud of the founders and their team, who have truly created a wonderful resource for fiber artists, and have continued to add features and branch out. It’s like Facebook, but with a focus…and generally with more kindness.

Something’s Happening Here

Back in mid-April, I participated in the exciting Landscape Committee of my Homeowner Association, where we helped decide on some improvements to the rather unattractive plantings near the Bobcat Lair house. Then nothing happened. For weeks.

A memory of the view outside the neighbor house where the meeting was.

Last week we got a note from The Portal (that’s the communications hub of the HOA that people either love or hate) saying that something had happened to the landscaper, but the project would happen soon.

It’s happening!

When I went out for my morning Vlassic walk yesterday, some orange lines had appeared on the ugliest of the beds, the one right next to my house with the underground utility and phone line boxes on it. Ooh!

I thought there were only two, but no, there are three ugly boxes next to my house. I think they are going to build a little enclosure for them.

Begging for Funds Outdoors

Oh, it was nowhere near as bad as I’m making it sound! I woke up yesterday rather early, because we were expecting a man to come work on our Hermits’ Rest gate, which had gotten fried in last week’s lightning storm.

As I was sitting there, I realized there was a market day over at the fancy baseball fields in Cameron, which are officially called the Yards of Cameron. Wow, I said, I bet that would be a nice place to publicize our new nonprofit, Milam Touch of Love (MTOL). I wish we’d planned to do that. Wait, I can just go do it!

Jean guards our brochures. Plus, free ad for Pamela.

I messaged the rest of the Board, and at least two of them said they’d come, too. Jean had the brilliant idea of seeing if our mutual friend, Pamela, would let us sit beside her booth and solicit memberships and donations, and generally let people know we exist. Pamela said yes, so Jean grabbed some chairs and we headed over, wearing our official shirts.

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Fun with Scraping Things

Well, that doesn’t tell you much about what I did last night, does it? I’ll explain. Everyone who’s ever driven between Cameron and Temple will have noticed a couple of very cute shops in Rogers, Texas. One of them, the Vis-a-Vis Galleria drew me and my sister in a few weeks ago. I discovered that, not only do they have fun clothing and a really tasteful collection of consignment items, they do classes on decorating furniture.

I managed to rub all the transfer off and it stuck to the wood. Also pictured: wine.

So, I signed up for a class, just to have some fun on a random weekend. I’d hoped to get someone to go with me, but I was fine with going alone. Since I’ve been channeling my dad, I’ve gotten better about being friendly with everyone I run into. It turns out that everyone has an interesting story, somewhere in there!

Driving Down the County Road 140 Obstacle Course

To get to the Hermits’ Rest, you have to go 2.2 miles down a county road for the last leg. As a county road in a poor county, you don’t expect immaculate maintenance. But, you might expect to be able to go in a straight line.

Not on our road! You know it’s a local driver when you see a lot of weaving and slowing down. There are spots where those in the know look like they are doing a slalom. There are areas on the hill where people driving what they think is a reasonable speed can go airborne.

We call that the roller coaster. When you first turn onto County Road 140 there’s what we call the washboard. It’s caused hubcaps to fall off. And there are at least two danger pits where I have no doubt people unfamiliar with the road have experienced damage to wheels or suspension systems.

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How’s the Weather? Active!

Yowee! Did we ever get a variety of weather yesterday! After a muggy morning, clouds began to build up, but rain kept going all around us (which often happens, at least in our perception. I guess severe weather is just going to be the norm as “global heating” continues.

Scary sky and dog looking for a toad (see next blog post)

The wind got whippier and whippier, though, and by the time we were getting Father’s Day dinner ready, it became quite breezy on the porch, where we spent a lot of time watching clouds make interesting formations.

Fresh vegetables and organic meat loaf. Farm living.

After eating our harvested squash, fresh beans, most delicious little roasted potatoes, and yum yum, a great meat loaf by Sara, we realized the wind was really, really hard and it was much cooler.

Leave Me Alone, Nighttime Patriarchy!

You know how your childhood issues, fears, and old patterns haunt you no matter how hard you try to move past them? (If you don’t, wow, you’re one exceptional human.) That’s certainly a struggle I’ve dealt with my whole life, or at least since I’ve realized you actually might be able to move past such things.

Spiders aren’t my childhood fear, but they make a good representation for scary things

I’ve made great progress in recent years with a lot of my “issues” (thanks to my fine therapist and Brene Brown books). I no longer blame everything that goes wrong in my life on my own shortcomings. I no longer hesitate to speak up when someone in authority makes a proclamation or judges someone in a way I know is wrong. I care much, much less about whether my personal appearance pleases anyone but me…and so on.

I’ve talked about it before, how I’ve managed to get the negative voices in my head to shut the heck up and say nice stuff instead (“Great work, me,” says my internal voice).

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Working on Community

When we first moved to the ranch, I was worried that it would be isolating living so far out here. That’s what Lee, the hermit, wanted. I wanted to have a community to enjoy life with, as well as some peace and quiet. I’m happy to report we are well on our way to a real community out here.

We missed the storms that hit Austin last night, but got cool clouds.

We were relieved to find a place near our friends Sara and Ralph, who warmly welcomed us when we first got here and really helped us set things up. And what would I do without my horse riding companion? Life would not be the same without these folks. We’ve also been lucky to make friends with Cathy, who lived at the cabin when we first arrived, and Tyler, who lives there now and does my snake handling.

When we added Mandi and her family over at Rattlesnake, wow, we could have been happier. They are so helpful in so many ways. One son cares for the horses and hens when I’m in Austin, and another has been helping Ralph with his mowing. Grateful for them.

Self Aware Means Self Care

Last week I was in a mental vortex, tizzy, or something. I’m so glad I was aware that something was amiss, and that the only person who could do anything about it was ME.

So, what kind of self care can I do? Can you do it, too?

Exercise

I realized yesterday that I hadn’t done any yoga in over two weeks, maybe three. Between work getting hectic and taking a week off, I was feeling sluggish and stiff.

I’ve gone to the class at work twice this week, and I can really tell it, both physically and mentally. I’m a lot more centered and my muscles feel well used, but good.

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