What positive events have taken place in your life over the past year?
Now this is a good question! It’s been quite a challenging year, but the good stuff has been huge. I’m actually doing very well, considering. And here’s why.
Bonus: cool skies, like this sun dog this morning, Thank you, Nature.
Progress with Horsemanship: I’ve gotten to where I can ride Drew, at least on many days. And Apache and I have made so much progress that I can’t stop smiling when I think of it. My nerves are better and he feels better, which is such a great combination.
He’s un-learning a lifetime of holding his head high.
Learning about Birds: I gave the Cornell Ornithology Lab a nice donation this year, because the improvements in the Merlin Bird ID app have made this bird lover know so much more about what lives here at the Hermits’ Rest and wherever I visit. I feel like I have familiar friends everywhere I go now, even with eight similar sparrows here at once.
Since I got no bird pictures today, here’s a Red Admiral I saw in my meditation tree.
Camping in Seneca: one of the best things about this year has been going camping with Lee. It’s been wonderful for our relationship to get away and spend time together (when I’m not hiking solo). He sure loves to drive that thing.
Natural-Lee
Making Mental Peace with My Family: I’ve worked hard at accepting the way things are with my family. I just want my son and sister happy with their choices. I’m doing much better at accepting the family members who DO talk to me just as they are. And I feel more empathy with my parents, who did the best they could. Even Mom. This kind of thing has helped bring me more peace inside.
39 years without Mom. That poor woman.
What’s good with you? Whatever it is, hold onto it! We’re in for some bumpy times, I think.
Happy Hanukkah for my Jewish friends. It’s such a hard time, especially for those close to me.
Send good thoughts our family’s way, since we’re experiencing a loss.
So let’s talk about yarn. Good idea.
I’m like a dog with a bone when it comes to needing to craft during stressful times.
Since I’m still waiting for my pale yellow yarn to arrive so I can get back to the temperature blanket, I’m experimenting. I saw a Facebook post by Lily M. Chin about crocheting a fancy hot pad/oven mitt thing using leftover yarn and a stitch called thermal stitch. This stitch is like double knitting in that it makes a double thickness of fabric.
I liked the looks of it and the idea of making something sturdy out of wool that would be oven safe and protect surfaces if you set something on it. Sounded like a good gift idea, from someone who isn’t buying gifts this year.
I followed Lily’s advice and searched for instructions for thermal stitch. Sure enough, there are plenty out there. I conveniently share the one I used, just so you won’t ask.
My sample swatch I made from two skeins of sock yarn held together. I had a bit of a learning curve since crocheting into the back of one stitch and the front of the stitch in the row below is harder with doubled yarn is challenging. I also was not very good at turning and starting the next row. But the pattern is really pleasant to look at.
Ha ha, I hid my ugly edge.
I decided to make a “real” hot pad/potholder out of one strand. Hanging around in a tote rescued from my former knitting closet happened to be a bunch of beautiful teal blue Lamb’s Pride wool/mohair yarn that many years ago was intended to be part of an extremely complicated cabled sweater. Look at that sideways cable. Note it’s in the round. Check those stitch markers. Ooh fancy.
A partial sweater in light that makes it look green.
Yes, it sure was fancy. I’m not sure why I gave up many years ago, but one reason may be that the weather here in Texas will newer be cold enough here to wear a wool/mohair cable extravaganza, barring the occasional polar vortex. Never fear! I think I’ll make a pillow out of what’s finished.
The yarn. Someone colored on the label.
Mostly I no longer feel the urge to make the most complicated project possible. When I looked at the thermal stitch in this yarn, I saw a beautiful and subtle movement and felt a satisfying thickness.
This shows how thick the fabric is.
Thermal stitch doesn’t have a lot of “give,” so it’s not a good garment choice. But it’s great for household items! Here’s the first one I made. I was still a bit unsure about the edges, and my border idea did not disguise it. I think I’ll erase that.
Functional.
The one I’m doing now has nice edges, so I’ll deem it gift worthy. I have enough yarn to make a third one, so I’ll use the first one myself.
Maybe when the temperature blanket is done I’ll make a large one like Lily Chin did. Hers was long, and folded over at each edge to make holes you can stick your hands in while slipping the main part under a casserole. It was cool. Also, turning it under hides any ugly edges, heh heh.
Photo by Lily M. Chin, used with permission. I like how turning the ends under would hide my ugly edges.
I really like the look of this textured stitch. I’m resisting any urge to embellish it with embroidery or threads running through it to make a plaid. Resistance is NOT futile.
Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
If they are referring to the winter holidays, like the Solstice or Christmas, then there’s only been one constant since my children were little, and that’s to have cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We used to eat them while opening gifts.
Something cheerful: Vlassic running at sunset.
For many, many reasons I’m not doing much for Christmas this year. It’s going to be a hard one for much of my family, and I’m not feeling very celebratory. I’m just going to go somewhere with Lee, if we can get someone to feed dogs and medicate Apache.
Speaking of horses, I caught Drew and Fiona being friendly today.
If not, I’ll stay home and eat cinnamon rolls then cook a meal for the same people I cooked Thanksgiving for. Maybe I’ll make pork loin and correct cranberry sauce. I think there will be small, handmade gifts for people.
You know, I think I just don’t want to do anything religious. I’m not happy with things being done in the name of religion these days, especially the ones stemming from Moses and his tribes. I’m disappointed in wars, book banning, misogyny, religious intolerance, and fundamentalism. All of it.
For the solstice, which at least predates Christmas, there will be candles and maybe a fire if the place we go has a fireplace. I’ll make decorations out of things from the woods and put intentions of peace into them.
Or we can watch a sunset.
It will be fine to skip materialism and shiny things for one year and concentrate on helping struggling loved ones however I can.
Daily Bird
We had some rain today, but it only rained hard briefly. It did quiet the birds down. The daily birds just have to be the European starlings.
As I went out to slog through the puddles to feed the horses, I heard sounds like tiny bells. It was a huge flock of starlings heading off to some field now that the sun was back out. It always amazes me how many there are.
I learned in a magazine that the flocks often contain the local grackles as well. Blackbirds like each other, I guess. I’m never going to love grackles, those resourceful parking lot scroungers with the incredibly annoying whistles, the great-tailed grackles. I’ll work on it.
It’s significant to me that Lee and I made it to 15 years of marriage. When you get married at age 50 you just hope you get some good years together!
Is the day after the wedding, opening cards. Lee looks like someone I don’t know. We’ve both gone a lot grayer.
We have done so. There have been times when we were both out of work and times when we were doing better than we ever expected. Now it’s medium! I’ll take it.
The emotional highs and lows have evened out, too, and I’m glad for that. It took a lot to get through some of the drama in our families, and that hasn’t changed. We just cope better now.
20082023At least I have the same smile
We’ve both done a lot of soul searching and gotten more emotionally stable, which helps when you have two people who don’t argue with each other well. It’s good to be able to step back and not react to each other’s quirky ways of being upset. You learn that through time.
I think this is the only time Lee has been clean-shaven since I knew him.
Anyway, I’m happy to have Lee to face the coming “interesting” times with. We are each other’s stability, I think.
We went to dinner in Rockdale, the next town over, where there’s a new Italian restaurant off the lobby of a motel. Yep. Small town living. It was excellent and a good change of pace since we still don’t go out much since COVID. All good.
Daily Bird
Today I’m going with the white-crowned sparrow, another friendly winter resident. They’re all over the place right now, with their white-throated friends. They don’t sing as much, but they have a pretty song in addition to a lot of chirping.
Mostly I enjoy watching them in the brush piles scratching for food. The younger ones completely blend in with their surroundings. See if you can find any immature birds in these photos of shiny adults!
If you could meet a historical figure, who would it be and why?
Yow. This is hard! I came up with the Buddha, because I’d like to have learned from him. I’d also have enjoyed talking to Eleanor Roosevelt. I’d love her perspective on the choices she made in life and to experience her intelligence in person.
Unretouched sunset
Really, though, regular people can be just as interesting as famous people. It would be interesting to talk to some of my ancestors in the Middle Ages in England, just to see what life was really like for women then.
Did they listen to birds or were they too busy trying to survive?
Okay, so it was US Thanksgiving, two years since my sister walked out and never spoke to me again. I have so many weird memories of this holiday, but I still love it. I miss cooking with someone.
You can see birds better now that leaves are off.
Today most of our usual dinner companions were dealing with pressing matters elsewhere, so it was just me, Lee, Anita, and my son. But it was pleasant, fairly relaxed (other than not being able to find a blender or even a potato masher to puree corn).
Table set with random things.
I messed up my own cranberry sauce recipe by adding lime oil (bad idea), but everything else was tasty, even the turkey I just stuck in the oven and cooked. Desserts were great, too. Anita made a lovely cranberry bread with fresh pecans from her neighborhood trees.
Food.
The best part of the evening was just sitting around and talking after dinner and a little concertina concert from my son, who found the instrument under some stairs in a building he’s renovating. Anyway, we all just went from humor to serious conversation, and I think we all had a good time. I’m very grateful for the chance to have relaxed conversations with people I love.
Rainbow after we ate.
So all is well, even though our minds were on family and friends who are struggling.
Daily Bird
I’ll say today’s bird is the loggerhead shrike. I enjoy them bellowing from the electric wires and leaving insects stuck on the fences. They’re such fierce little guys. I enjoyed watching this one today.
I am completely bowled over by the wonderful gift Lee made me for our 15th wedding anniversary. It may be “only” 15 years, but we’re very pleased to have had such a great time in our late-life relationship.
Me and Lee when we got engaged.
I’d been seeing Lee messing around on his computer a lot lately and I was really wondering why he was putting so many photos of birds in his journal. It’s not that he doesn’t like birds, but he’s not crazy about them like I am.
Whee! Sandhill cranes! Clack clack!
I knew he’s been practicing book binding and has bound a couple of books he wrote and plans to bind recent journals. On top of that he’d asked me a few questions about my own journal. But I didn’t think anything of it until he spilled the beans that he was making me a journal for an anniversary gift!
It’s a book!
There is a great deal of hand work involved in book binding. Lee decided to tell me what he was doing so he could hang out with me while he hand sewed all the signatures (units of a certain number of pages) together. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen him last weekend. He sewed it with red thread, too. I like red.
You can see the signatures at the top.
I’d have been impressed just with a blank book, having watched how hard it is to press all the pages together, create the cover (with genuine book cloth), and affix the cover to the book (I think that’s the actual binding part—gee, I worked for a book publisher in my twenties and still don’t know all the terms).
A two-page spread
But no, he made a bullet journal with dots on the pages, a pretty place to write headings, and lovely images on each page, which he cut with his scary killer paper cutter to go all the way to the edges.
Page closeup
And it has a cute title page. It’s really a labor of love, which I truly appreciate. It means SO much to me to get a handmade gift, especially one so carefully thought out. I’m going to use it as a bird journal, so it will be in use a long time.
Life. Mostly birds.
What did I get him? I also gave him his gift early. It was a bunch of tasteful linen book cloth from a library supply company. I guess we were thinking along the same lines.
Our feet.
Lee got a really good new printer that will print in high quality on large paper, so now he’s working on book sleeves. I just want to print horse pictures, of course.
I said the above to Lee and a minute later he handed me this. It’s pretty impressive!
Daily Bird
I thought I was going to have to do the cranes again, because until late in the evening the only birds I’d heard or seen were dozens and dozens of them. The day had started out very windy and cold, so no one was flitting about.
More cranes.
But, as I was putting Apache’s saddle away and listening to cranes, I heard something else interesting. I started the Merlin app and finished what I was doing and let the horses out of their pens.
Merlin says…
I was right! I was hearing owls. Multiple owls. Great horned owls! The only known predators of the barred owls who are usually here! Where did all these owls come from? I don’t have an answer, but this was my first time hearing them here. They make the “normal” hoo-hoo owl sound, among others.
I guess I was hearing a haunting duet.
To add to the wonder of the evening, all the black vultures started heading to their roosts for the night. There were 25 I counted. It was lucky that the wind had died down and there was no traffic noise from FM 485 for once. I could hear their wings beating. I love that sound.
The sunset was also beautiful, but I was too busy listening to take a photo. Here’s last night at Tarrin’s house.
I can answer the prompt and share today’s triumph at the same time. How efficient.
I slept last night and that seems to have helped settle my nerves. I think the kitty therapy I’ve gotten the last couple of days may have helped, too. Spending time with Potato, my son’s purry and substantial cat has been quite calming.
You’re welcome.
What a nice kitty. I’ll be sorry when my pet sitting duties are over, but I still have plenty of animals to exude good vibes and positivity. Yeah, that’s a good thing about pets. They provide companionship with no strings attached. They help you heal.
And thanks to pets, I see lots of sunsets.
You may be aware that I consider cockleburs to be a bad thing about having pets. Now that Alfred stays mostly in our fenced-in area, burs are a horse problem. Mine remain covered. I have a plan to eliminate them once it dries up a little. All manual labor, but they’ll join the bur-n pile. Ha ha.
Today I worked and worked, but made it to the horses before it was too dark. I arrived armed with a bottle of inexpensive sunflower oil. In the tack room I found some great gloves I’d bought with plastic on the palms and fingers. But proof? I was ready to find out.
I resolved to de-bur whichever horse I could grab first. Apache had been all friendly all day long (now that he loves his pill treats), but when he saw the bridle, he stood in mud and sort of dared me to come get him. Rather than slide all over and risk twisting my knee again (I did so yesterday and it still hurts), I turned around and put the bridle on Drew, who was politely standing beside me, encrusted in mud and burs.
Drew is still leery of having his head touched, so he looked awful. It was embarrassing, so I didn’t take a picture. Instead, I got out the tools and removed at least one layer of mud from him. Then I donned the gloves and poured oil on his tail and worked it all around the burs that had it looking like a dog tail.
Sure enough, the burs slipped off nicely and my hands stayed much happier thanks to the gloves. I think I even had fun, a little. In the end, he’s had a conditioning treatment and is all smooth back there. I hope I didn’t do some bad horse management, because I didn’t ask anyone before I rashly did it.
Look, no burs.
There were a lot of burs in that tail!
Then came the hard part, the mane. He wasn’t thrilled about that but was pretty patient. I started from the back and moved forward. Parts of his mane were fine, but some looked impossibly matted. I worried I might have to do some trimming. I was impressed that he let me get all the way up to his ears.
You call that pet therapy??
His head owie looks ok but he’s not interested in me doing much more than taking off surface burs. By that time it was getting dark, anyway. I’ll just let the oil soften his front burs.
His halter is loose because I’d put it on over a mass of burs.
Tomorrow I hope to work on the spotted mud ball known as Apache since Sara is coming to trim my guys.
PS: anyone who thought Drew couldn’t have been kicked in the head by our mini-donkey Fiona will be interested to know that I witnessed him chasing her with his head lowered, like dogs playing. She did, indeed land some solid blows on him. It’s a wonder he has any brains left. And horse brains are little.
I didn’t realize the prompt today would fit with what I wanted to write about today. But it does. I’ve had some of the worst anxiety symptoms and bad dreams I’ve had in years since Friday. Ugh. I get strong chest pains, tightness in my head with ringing sounds, and weakness in my legs. None of this is pleasant. At least my anti-anxiety meds work most of the time!
Riding helps, too.
But, it turns out that, while I only get moderately stressed out about the numerous health issues in my immediate family, a sick horse throws me for a loop. And by the way, he’s no sicker now than he was last week, but knowing something was wrong got me full time of worry, angst, anxiety…and guilt.
I guess I’m unhappy to find out that Apache’s blood test results were extra bad (like 400 where high normal is 40) for ACTH. This means that, as we’ve always suspected, he has PPID or Cushing’s desease. The link tells you what the tests he took were, and we’re from the place doing the testing. His insulin wasn’t bad, which is good news.
Look, I lost weight!
Don’t panic. Medicine is on order that will reduce his symptoms and make him feel much better, though it won’t fix his endocrine system, which has probably been bad his whole life. We’ve just been managing the heck out of his symptoms.
My dear teacher and companion
Why have I been so upset? It’s because this furry family member has meant so much to me. He’s the first horse I learned to take care of and to ride, so he’s dealt with all my learning experiences and mistakes. Conversely, I’ve dealt with all his issues and idiosyncrasies, along with his curiosity, eagerness to learn, humor, and patience.
Don’t forget my beauty, other than the furry coat and sweating.
He and I each have our challenges, but we’ve stuck together through bad feet, poor horsemanship, anxiety (both of us), and changes. And in the past year or so, we’ve finally become a real team and started having fun. There’s been a lot of growth going on for both of us.
I’m your buddy.
So Friday, when I found out the vet was supposed to have sent me those test results but I didn’t have them, and I got the impression they were bad, no amount of me telling myself that getting upset wouldn’t change things worked. I just fell apart and got mentally dysfunctional. I mean, internally. I did all my stuff and acted fine. I just hurt inside. I care so much about my animals.
I was mainly feeling bad that I didn’t get the testing done earlier, like I’ve let him suffer needlessly. I was concentrating so hard on his feet, muscles, and diet that I missed this. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to get haltered some days, or why he gets squirrelly on rides…blah blah blah. I’m just making stuff up at this point, but I guess that’s what you do when you think you could have helped but didn’t.
He’s made so much progress!
My hope it’s that by talking about my relationship with my Paint/Arab companion of lo these many years I’ll help myself feel better. He will be on his way to feeling better as soon as those meds arrive, and we’ll take it from there.
I’ll remember good stuff like hearing the sandhill cranes migrating overhead.
We will both be fine, especially if folks treat us kindly and gently. I don’t need to be made to feel worse with a bunch of, “Why didn’t you…?” And “You should have…” stuff. I just need ways to move forward and live the rest of our time together positively and happily. The horses and my inner circle are what keep me going!
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
I’ll write about my day and viewing the eclipse tomorrow. For now…
I first felt like a grown-up was when I found out my first son was on the way and his dad and I had to put together a wedding in a few weeks, buy a house, and plan for parenting.
I was 32.
Dragonflies symbolize transformation. Becoming a parent transformed me.
I love art. It’s hard to say who my favorite artist is, because I like different things from different eras, in different media…all delightful to me.
So I’ll be selfish and say my mom. Her water colors looked like they were from another world. Or my stepmother, Florence. Yes, my dad married two artists.
Flo and her bluebonnet painting
I had a book report to write, but it’s been a long. But good day. Apache was a champ at his lesson, and Drew has a sore leg again, but we helped him. It was fun!
This is Drew’s glamour shot. Apache looking much better.
I’ve had such a great week or so with the horses. Mabel has turned into my biggest fan. Today I called her when she was at the far corner of the back pasture, went in the tack room for a moment, and when I returned, there she was, in her pen looking at me like she was saying, “You rang?”
Her reward? Dinner! She always turns her food dish over and eats off the ground.
And Dusty had me really worried for a while. He started to get real thin.
Here he is running toward dinner with Drew as Fiona patiently waits for them to go by. We hope he puts on weight and isn’t dealing with a condition.
He’s looking better and seems to appreciate his increased rations.
Thanks, Suna!
With all the turmoil in the world right now, it’s nice to have both art and animals to keep us grounded.
The Hermits' Rest 