That’s been the highlight of the past few days. I’ve taken some early spring flowers and recognizable birds.
You can tell this is a Great Blue Heron!
I’ve just not felt very emotionally connected these days. That makes it hard to blog. I’m just blanking my mind out and gliding through each day. I enjoy the birds, the poultry, the horses, and the changing weather.
It’s looking practically spring-like.
It’s all fine. I’m just taking a break from the intensity. Voting means that I don’t have to listen to all the campaigning and can throw the daily collection of post cards from this Schwertner guy who keeps repeating the reasons I didn’t vote for him.
True sign of spring. The first anemone.
I did have some fun, sorta, when I helped Kathleen do some kitchen reorganizing and watched our manly men remove our old washer and dryer. Tomorrow the new ones show up. Dry clothing will be awfully nice.
I will need to do some cleaning first. Luckily, water spewed all over the place, thanks to an unhappy connection. Cleaned the floor!
Tomorrow I get to go hang out with some friends in nature. Yay. I’ll get to take more close-ups of late-winter new growth.
HenbitDandelion Field of henbitWeird moth I found on our house.
Plus I will keep crocheting. It’s probably why I’m so zoned out.
Two colors of the solid squares for my blanket. Don’t worry, temperature blanket is moving along on schedule.
My mental state will head back up. It always does. In the meantime I’ll enjoy my numbness.
I noticed last night that I was feeling “antsy” when I was watching Deep Space Nine with no project in my hands. I’d finished the red hat and both days of February in the other project. I realized I was using the rhythmic knitting and crochet stitches to self regulate. I guess that’s what I’ve done my whole life, with all my lifetime of anxiety. At least my compulsion occasionally results in something useful (or yet another partial project).
I use this fine afghan stitch coaster daily. Crafts CAN be useful!
Not to worry. I recently got inspired and bought the yarn to make what I think will be a pretty blanket, in a very pleasing wool. I’m so tired of acrylic, though it’s the best choice for the temperature blankets.
I got it on crochet.com
There are two different types of squares in the blanket, and they are joined with the white (undyed) yarn while doing the final round. I think it will be a lot of fun, and I’ll enjoy the pretty colors.
My first squares and three of the tonal colors.
I also got a good supply of red wool worsted for more hats, too. I hope to make some for friends. This will ensure, as they used to say, “no idle hands” (title of a book about the history of knitting).
Fresh, red wool worsted
I ordered these before I found some really good red yarn in my stash (with moth damage on one skein).
More red yarn.
I’ve always turned to the colors and textures to distract myself. I made soooo many socks in the mid 2000s when my beloved job was going down into the chaotic toilet. And when my mom was dying and my relationship falling apart, I made giant, complicated fair isle and Aran sweaters. It helped.
Inadvertent photo of my emotional state. Muddled.
And hey! I can do handwork AND hang out with birds! Win.
I’m so tired. Trying to work and take in the negativity in the world takes a lot of energy.
I must breathe.
The best part of the day was that it warmed up enough to go sit with the birds for a half hour after work. Bluebirds were singing and singing for some reason, which was heavenly. And so many woodpeckers, including Flickers, added to the chorus.
That helped.
Peaceful winter light. Ahh.
Tomorrow is a long day of stressful meetings. At least there are few days like that in this job.
Two meanings to this: one is I’m still stumped as to why my mental health tanked so hard—I couldn’t even be trying myself to go to my riding lesson today. I was too woozy to feel safe riding even good old Apache.
That meant I got to be home for sunset and the welcome rain that followed.
The second way I’m stumped is good, though. I now have a very large stump in my birding area!
Deceased elm tree.
This tree was a hazard on a main road and had to be removed. Lucky for me, the tree’s pieces were destined for our burn pile, and I had mentioned how cool it would be to use a large slice as a bird feeding platform.
This was the first piece I saw. Nowhere near as big as the one I got.
I was working on the porch this morning so I could also watch birds, when I heard the unmistakeable sound of our ancient backhoe approaching. It was beating the stump!
The regular tractor couldn’t carry this!
I have to give them credit, they got me the best stump ever. It’s huge! And when it gets trimmed it will have two heights of at least somewhat level surface that the dogs can’t get to. And since it’s inside our fence, curious cows won’t be able to mess with any feeding or watering stuff I put up there.
The plan is to anchor the birdbath on there, too, so it won’t fall over.
I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet. I usually don’t feed birds, since we have plenty for them to eat here, even in winter, but it might be fun to get some photos.
Trying to show me compared to the stump.
It’s fun to think about, anyway. I am looking forward to tomorrow, when I can sit in my birding station on dry pillows (because I put them in the storage bin!) and look at the stump. You know, when I read that sentence it occurs to me that it sounds dull as heck. Oh well.
A dull photo of doves roosting before the storm.
I will prove I’m more boring than you’d imagine by telling you the evening’s excitement was when Lee realized the rain on our dumpster made the lights in the house reflect off it. We thought it was mysterious lights in the empty field across the road.
It looked less like a dumpster and more like spooky lights in person.
I also heard a turkey in the woods. Now that was exciting. Connie didn’t gobble back at it, though.
Sure, today was both a packed work day and a day of dealing with those anxiety symptoms I abhor, but the horses didn’t do anything to deserve neglect.
We turn our backs on you!
It turns out that when the farrier left yesterday, he turned all the horses out of the pens, then like a good rancher, he shut the gate he let them out of, because he’d found it shut. I didn’t figure that out until late afternoon today, which was really not good on my part.
I turn my back on you, too.
You see, I fed and watered them in the morning, so I just visually checked on them yesterday afternoon, when they were all happily eating the hay in their round bale.
Same thing happened this morning; they were way out in the pasture and looked fine. I never checked the pens other than to note what species of dove was on the upper poles (European Collared Doves).
I intended to feed both them and the chickens early in the afternoon, but as soon as I walked out the door, I had to go back in and help someone. The second time I walked out, I was distracted by a huge tree stump that was headed for the burn pile, but did get the chickens fed before another call.
Huge (already dead and a danger in town)
By the time I finally got out to turn the water off and feed horses, I was confused to see them standing around outside the pens. Then I realized what happened. Poor horses! Luckily it didn’t rain or storm today and they have a water trough outside the pens. So, they were fine.
Dusty plodded right over to his spot and indicated he was ready for his senior feed.
Tuesday is always hard because I start work early and end late, so there was no exercise time, but I did check all their feet and was happy to see Apache’s eye looked good. He’d gotten a piece of hay in it and I’d been treating it.
No drainage or goo coming out. Yay.
Being horses, they weren’t upset with me, just happy for food and bur removal. They always cheer me up.
Dusty has to be sure he gets all his “gravy.” He’s a wet chewer.
I think I got more non-spam calls today than I usually get in a month, but I enjoyed helping folks at work, and was happy to get calls from my doctor’s office about getting something to help with these blasted chest pains.
Looking at these guys helps, but I need meds. Do notice Spice’s tail. She’s an active swisher.
Let’s hope tomorrow is nice and calm, with happy pills and maybe some rain!
I’ll be sitting right here in the morning, unless it’s raining hard!
Okay, it’s not a city; it’s a small town. And I no longer go into town very often. I’m avoiding humanity. Plus many of my favorite places are no longer there, sigh (probably because I stopped going anywhere optional).
But there are still a few places I like in Cameron, Texas, so I must choose one. It isn’t very hard, basically because I truly love pecan sticky buns. The only place you can get them is at the local bakery!
See, I even have a dusty sticker in my office.
Shirley Mae’s has a cute playroom my son built, many upgrades done by Chris, and it’s where Anita and I used to get coffee and snacks together before she stopped taking any time off work. Lots of good memories there, and the owners are also great.
Where the sticky buns live (photo from their Facebook page)
I really could have used a baked item this morning, since I drove all the way to the courthouse for jury duty, only to have it canceled right as I arrived. I’d called the jury duty line before I left, and it did say I had to show up. So, 99 people and I drove from around the county just to be good citizens.
Nice building, though.
It’s typical for all the cases to settle before trial here. It costs a lot to do jury trials, so they try to plea bargain everything. I get it. And apparently this kind of thing happens often in other places, too. So, I just wish the bakery was open on Mondays for sad potential jurors.
On another note
I’d say all is well that ends well, but I have to admit I feel mentally unbalanced. Last night I started having severe anxiety symptoms, the chest pains that you hope aren’t really a heart attack. (Watch said my pulse was fine.) Then last night, I had a horrible nightmare that had me screaming for my mom and woke Lee up.
I wonder what’s bothering me? Not this wheel bug!
Today I have continued to feel anxious and pained in my chest. Of course I have no more Xanax, because I haven’t felt really bad since this time last year. What’s weird is I haven’t felt no frightening new/old President to concern me. Things are fine as far as I can tell.
I hope I figure this out!
And don’t worry; I’ve dealt with anxiety my whole life, just less in the past few years. I can handle it with all that breathing and meditation and stuff.
I’m relieved to say I no longer have itchy stitches above my left eye. And yes, I removed them myself with clean (Anita asked, so you might also) nail clippers. One snip and out they came, saving me a couple of hours of travel and a visit to a place with scary germs.
Not bad! I’m almost healed.
I was surprised at how little the scar shows up. The stitch holes look worse than the cut. I know I’m a good healer, so I don’t think I’m deformed. It’s still swollen and tender, so I don’t plan any rash actions in the near future.
I’ll stick to artsy photos of dead thistles.
I did take my hurt black glasses over to Marvina’s House of Optical Whimsy (not its real name) to see if they could be fixed, but alas, the hinge is dead. So I made myself feel better by picking out some new (more whimsical) black frames and…maybe more whimsy. I do love eyeglasses. So does Marvina. Tomorrow I’ll get my eyes examined and patiently (not) wait for new frames. I just hope my prescription hasn’t changed so I can still use my other glasses.
So many choices. I chose none of these.
Other than bird drama (Sandhill Cranes, a marauding Harrier, and a friendly Bewick’s Wren) today was calm. The big rain isn’t here yet, all livestock are great, and work is dandy.
Such a friendly little guy.
I’ll stop before I make more typos. Sorry about the recent ones, for you email subscribers, but at least my friend Sue R finds them so I can fix them on the website. It takes a village!
I usually go as a witch (requires no costume), but this year I can be an accident victim.
Yes, it hurt a bit
I got stuck between Dusty and the gate when Apache charged in to eat Dusty’s leftovers. Usually Dusty flees safely but he was too close to me and I was knocked into a metal gate. At least my glasses protected my eye.
Poor glasses. They are bent and bloody.
I did bleed a lot, but hoped it would stop. Alas, it did not, so off to the ER for rich people we went. I just wasn’t up for hours and hours at the germy hospital. I was the only patient and was in and out in an hour. I got seven stitches, so I guess my family was right to encourage me to get the cut looked at. The good news is my glasses (non-broken) cover most of the bruising and stitches.
See, I look fine.
The doctor said my skin looked amazing for my age. Aw shucks. Thanks, Olay products.
Here’s a nice bee fly to take your mind off blood and bruising.
I’m now dreading the numbing shots wearing off, but I’ll be fine and I’ll be more careful when letting Dusty out from now on. Usually I’m quite careful but I was tired from a long day of work and Master Naturalist stuff. That’s when accidents happen.
I was in a hurry.
I’m not particularly looking forward to a long weekend of explaining my face, but I’m cleared to attend the Master Naturalist annual meeting, so I’m going!
At least I’m no longer dripping.
More later. All is well, and I’ve done all the right bruising protocols, etc. And I’m on the lookout for signs of further issues.
The Hermits' Rest 