Ramblings – Page 28 – The Hermits' Rest

What’s That Glow?

There’s a certain glow here at the ranch house, and it’s not a tree or a menorah. Nor is it the glow of my cheeks from hanging out in the woods listening to birds.

The glow is from the uranium in the gift from my spouse that was procured today. Yep.

There really wasn’t much going on here today, but since we’re going out of town Monday, we didn’t want to camp. So we went for a drive and ended up in scenic Waco, Texas, an hour north of us (though we wandered around to get there.

Now, it’s not like nothing happened. I did my nails. Reindeer Whisperer and a bow.

When we got to Waco we bypassed all tourist attractions, even the ones I like (mammoth remains, cute zoo, wetland park) and just explored different neighborhoods from poor to gentrifying to comfortable to fancy ones by the lake.

I guess it’s pretty sad that my first highlight of the trip was eating at Bush’s Chicken. It’s my favorite, crunchy on the outside and hit and juicy in the inside. Plus there’s fried okra.

After we ate, Lee decided he wanted to go to an antique store, so searched out the closest one. It was a good idea.

We went to an old neighborhood with lots of restored houses, where Show and Tell Antiques is located. (Link is to Facebook page.) This place is great fun for antique lovers and those interested in old houses in need of restoration.

I was too busy looking at stuff in every nook and cranny to take pictures but loved the old kitchen and bathrooms in the 1908 house built for a Doctor Pepper founder (another Waco claim to fame).

Check out that stove and floor in the kitchen!

This place is extra cool. Since I love glassware and china, I had a blast. I also enjoyed talking to family members, who shared lots of history and may have been making sure we didn’t shoplift.

I was amazed at this collection of very old needlework magazines, which I did not get, because, well, I already have a lot of this kind of thing.

I honestly wasn’t going to get anything until I saw two tiny purple hobnail glass containers, probably for matches or toothpicks. They are just perfect t for my window display of purple glass in my bathroom.

Then I went in a dark corner under the stairs. What did I see? Vaseline glass. Not fake. And by gosh there were things shaped like logs. Even the little legs on the items looked like tree stumps.

So, if you aren’t a collector of art glass, you might not know how cool this Vaseline glass (with bonus opalescence) is. It has uranium in it! I know a couple of collectors with many interesting pieces that I’ve enjoyed looking at, but I never had anything. This little set is so perfect for a nature lover…I glowed with love.

The log is a sugar bowl and the pump is a creamer, I learned. By the way, it’s safe to display.

Lee thinks I’m weird but got it for me as a Yule gift, a bit early. We didn’t get much bargaining, but I was ok with it. I’ve checked the prices online. You can pay more or less. But look, it glows in black light!

Now I feel extra justified in buying that black light flashlight!

I’m not sure where I’ll put the little keepsakes. I have them in my bedroom but they disappear against the yellow walls. I’ll put them I. My corner hutch, where I can see them from bed, perhaps. But this pleased me a lot. I always wanted some Vaseline glass, but never found exactly what I wanted. It was this. (The set is not particularly uncommon but not overly plentiful either—it was made by Northwood probably in the early twentieth century.)

As a bonus, I got to enjoy clouds and the sunset on the way home. So good. The sun also glows with scary rays, so it fits!

Daily Bird

It was rather quiet this morning when I went out, but I ended up with 38 birds heard, and some great viewing experiences. The two owls at the top of the post were impressive, but I also enjoyed watching the antics of a teeny red-eyed vireo. But the bird of the day is one I hadn’t heard here until today, the red-breasted nuthatch.

I didn’t see this one, but I heard it. I saw one in Buescher State Park, though, and it was cute as heck going up and down a tree. I’m fond of birds that climb like that, like the brown creeper.

I’ll remember today for so many reasons!

Let’s Get Positive!

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.

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.

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.

One Thing I Would Like to Change

What is one thing you would change about yourself?

If you’ve read more than a few posts on this here blog you know that this crone has a long list of things she’d like to change about herself, and that she at least says she’s working on them.

Today’s birds are white-crowned sparrows in a tree. They sang and sang.

So, what’s one thing I’d like to change about myself? Today I nominate my persistent and unwavering drive toward conflict and avoidance. I’d love to stop apologizing all the time and learn to take up for myself, whether it pisses people off and makes them dislike me or not.

The end.

Day or Night, It’s All Right

Are you more of a night or morning person?

Let’s answer this prompt. It’s harmless. I used to prefer nights, back when I did a lot of music stuff and going out with friends. I think I liked the activities, like choir practice and rehearsals more than the fact that it was night.

This is here just because I thought it was pretty.

Now that I mostly stay home, I’ve come to enjoy my morning routine out in the fields and woods. It’s grounding and gets my mind ready to get stuff done. I do enjoy having morning rituals like coffee and filling out my bullet journal for the day, too.

I often meditate while looking at lichen and bark.

I have evening rituals, too, like blogging and reading before I go to sleep. I guess I like to ease into the day and ease back out.

Magazine patiently waiting for me to finish blogging

I enjoyed the distraction of a lesson on Apache this afternoon. I wanted to build on last weekend, and it worked. We are doing well together, and I’m impressed with his eagerness to learn. I’m a lot more calm, too. He’s feeling better.

Next lesson will be for Drew, but it’s been postponed for family stuff. That gives me lots of time to work with them both at home, though. Drew and I have lots to practice, too! He is still weird about his head but otherwise tons of fun.

Daily Bird

I think the great blue herons on the ranch will be upset (or more upset) with me if I don’t feature them, so today’s the day.

At least today I didn’t scare one who was busily cleaning out the overflow pond like I’d done for two days. I just watched them flying and posing at water’s edge.

My favorite thing about these large birds is their croak. They yell when disturbed and made to fly off. Often they don’t vocalize enough for the Merlin app to catch them, but it did this week. It’s a great creaky sound.

I’m glad we have water to attract these and the other herons/egrets here. They have so many postures and look so elegant when they fly. And they’re so big! It’s a nice contrast with all the tiny woodland birds.

Hard Decisions That Turn Out OK

What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?

You ask that, do you? I agonized a very this for about three years, during which time my mother passed away followed immediately by a breakup with the love of my life that was all my fault, followed by a serious of incredibly stupid relationship decisions and total failure at my career path. 1984-87 really stunk.

Here comes the brutal honesty for which I’m noted, for better or worse.

I’d say this was the period in my life when I realized that, no, I wasn’t the brilliant, nice, ethically consistent person I thought I was. That’s hard. I realized just how mentally screwed up I was in my drive to be perfect and that I was an emotional vampire who confused sex with love. Everyone has to realize they’re imperfect eventually (if they’re honest with themselves).

Worse, I ended up unable to stomach being an academic with all the drama, pressure, and competition. It just wasn’t what I’d hoped it was and I wasn’t actually very good at it.

So I decided to leave my career path and all the people I cared about at the university and do something else. I felt like a failure and that I’d let my family and friends down. That was hard. Acknowledging my inadequacy was hard. Admitting I was a bad partner was hard. Owning up to my anxiety and past trauma was very hard.

But no one really cared very much about my inner turmoil. They just wanted to see me stable, happier, and more positive. I ended up free of expectations and obligations and could move forward to use all I’d learned in a perfectly good career. I learned to love in a positive way. It was OK.

Oh look I’m crocheting something. It’s a hot pad in thermal stitch.

I make decisions much faster now. I’ve learned that whatever I do will be fine. I’ll learn the lessons I need to learn and keep putting one foot ahead of the other. Today is what matters and I want more peaceful, fulfilling days than stressful ones.

Daily Bird

I enjoyed a group of Harris’s sparrows today. I realize I’ve featured a lot of sparrows but we have eight kinds here! I heard these guys by the brush pile this morning, which pleased me because there was so much traffic on our road due to an accident that it was hard to hear birds in front of the house.

Harris’s sparrows make a less melodic sound than some of the others, more like very loud, low barks. It’s hard to decide how to describe it. But they were chatty and friendly today.

A pair of them started out in the honey locust, then got on the ground quite close to me, so I could easily see their interesting black head and chest markings. They’re the most distinctive ones, for sure.

By the way, the house wren and Carolina wren are loudly lobbying to be featured, so I’ll get something else soon. In the other hand, I’ve seen Mexican eagles (caracaras) doing mating dances in the sky twice this week. They do some loud wing flapping! So, they’re candidates. More to come.

Holiday Traditions Are Few This Year

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.

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.

We Made It! 15 Years Married!

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.

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!

Is It Instinct?

Do you trust your instincts?

I can’t top yesterday’s blog post, so I’ll just answer the daily prompt.

I’ve always trusted my instincts. I’m intuitive. Besides that, I think I take in cues I don’t consciously perceive that lead me to know what I should or want to do. It’s just how I’m built. I’m not good at deliberation; in fact many bad decisions I’ve made came from overthinking.

Sure, things go wrong, but often I learn the most when acting on instinct and getting different results than I expected. You just make the best decision with the information you have at the time. The worst thing is to not do anything at all, so my instincts are good enough for me.

Bug of the day is a young green stink bug. Yep, not green at this stage.

Honestly, as I’ve gotten older I’ve quit believing any predictions, promises, or plans for the future. I’m just going with the flow and not trying to influence the outcome. I’ll learn what I’m meant to learn. That has lessened my anxiety considerably.

Bird watching also helps. I saw the kingfisher catch a fish today!

So yeah, I think my instincts are correct for me and I’ll stick with them.

My instinct today was that I needed to spend some time with my equine friends. So while Drew was being a pain for Sara while she tried to trim his hooves, I hung out with the other horses.

I got burs out of them, which took a while for Dusty. His mane is sparse, but his thick tail was just about all bur. He munched hay and let me work on him. I brushed him, too, which he always likes.

I still manage to get burs in this little tuft.

Mostly I worked with Mabel, though. She’s been on a product called Gut-X for a while and it seems to have done the trick and helped her put on more weight. I’m pleased.

She’d already been getting happier, and now she voluntarily comes up for attention. She let me fix up her tail and much of her mane, but mostly she wanted to be brushed softly and stroked. We spent a long time just being together.

Still has that face only a mother could love.

After I was done, she stood in her pen and yawned over and over. This kind of release is a very good sign in a horse. She’s feeling good, even though one hoof is cracked and her eye had been runny earlier (she got hay in there).

Today’s Bird

Today I saw a bird we all see often, but one I rarely see here at the ranch. It really surprised me, as it was sitting on top of the utility vehicle right next to me as I went through the gate from the house.

The pigeon never moved. Eventually it must have flown off, though. We see doves here (mourning, white-winged, Inca) but not often pigeons. Wonder where it came from?

It’s Easy to Guess My Favorite Subject in School

What was your favorite subject in school?

It rained and rained and I worked and worked today, so I didn’t have any “adventures” to write about. I was glad to see the blog prompt for today, since it fit in with my day’s activities.

Have you guessed my favorite subject in school? It’s pretty obvious, though after sixth grade there were really two.

Since I have the condition where I’m just driven to write (hypergraphia, self diagnosed), it’s no surprise that I loved English grammar and composition. I still do, though I’ve cut out all the convoluted sentences and polysyllabic vocabulary of my youth, at least in public.

I don’t have any photos from today, so consider these old collages as writing prompts.

There’s nothing I liked better than to be assigned to diagram me some sentences or write a nice, juicy composition. Term papers with lots o’ footnotes were also my idea of fun. In high school the only way I got a boyfriend was to find the guy who liked fancy sentences as much as I did (he’s an English/film studies professor now).

But I did have another passion, which, probably not coincidentally, involved arranging words in certain ways. It was my second love, choral music. I loved how chords worked, harmonies intertwined, and crescendos followed decrescendos. While writing was a solo activity, chorus involved working with others, blending and matching in tone.

I learned a lot about discipline, learning rules so you can later break them, cooperation, and vulnerability through these activities. Sharing your writing and performing in public are not easy until you get a lot of practice and learn to take feedback constructively. (My high school chorus teacher and grad school advisor are still alive and could tell you how much I had to learn in that area.) (Note that there’s still work to be done.)

Thanks for being an audience for my blog. It’s a nice break from job aids and meeting minutes, which I wrote all day today. I’m lucky to have a place to be a “real,” person, not an influencer or manufactured celebrity.

These SoulCollage cards can make you think.

Go out and read some other great blogs by real people! I love learning what I have in common with others, as well as our differences. I learn a lot, and you can, too.

We learn more if we look. Right now looking can be hard.

Time Is Not Real

Do you need time?

But it feels like it. Just like I can’t be my higher self and live in the moment, I feel like it’s necessary to act like time marches forward since everyone else thinks it does.

The Temperature Blanket, current as of November 6, acts like time is real.

I had more things in the bullet journal to do today than I was able to get to. That’s even with working on videos while doing my helping calls. But I’ll start again.

Trying to get burs out of horse manes and tails required way more time than there were hours in the late afternoon. But I got Apache’s mane cleared off and I got him to eat his medicine. Tarrin was right. Burying it in senior horse feed got him to eat.

It was a hard day. Money stuff was hard. Horse stuff was hard. Work was work-like. I’m still full of anxiety but I got back on my medication. I hope I don’t leave it next time I go camping!

I did have time for lunch with the friends and to check out progress on the new bakery being renovated in town. That will be another great addition to downtown Cameron!

It’s an extra cheerful blue now. Quite an improvement.

Secretly I’m sending tons of good thoughts for friends dealing with the consequences of mishaps and accidents that happened to loved ones. Know you’re in my thoughts, friends.