Ramblings – Page 3 – The Hermits' Rest

Geez, Louise, will ya look at me

Today was good. Lots of work was done and I had a nice talk with my Master Naturalist friend, Donna. Then Lee and I tried out my friends’ new restaurant on the Cameron square. I had a nice chat with Michelle, then enjoyed a Chicago dog and really good green chile creamed corn. All fine. Pleasant.

I went up to my bathroom and immensely clean closet just now to change into pajamas and ingest my hormonal normalization pills. As one does, I looked into the mirror as I brushed my blueish hair. Not only the hair was bluish. So was my face.

I look like I’m bruised. There was another splotch by my nose, but I wiped it off to be sure it would come off.

Okay, spouses, if you go to dinner with our spouse, at least LOOK at their face. I tell Lee when he’s dribbled food on his beard! He could sweetly whisper to me that there’s blue smears all over my face. Geez.

Explanation: today I spent some time reorganizing my pens, since I change colors each month. July was red and blue, in a feeble attempt at portraying loyalty to where I live. one blue pen had sprung a leak and I got some on my hands. I washed that all off. But I didn’t check my face. I did a Zoom call with my boss with that stuff on it, too. Argh. That pen is in the trash basket now.

This is cheerier. I finished July on my temperature blanket at the end of July! I can easily see only three days when the high was below 90, plus three 100+ days (today being one). I’m predicting August will look similar but maybe with no oranges at all. A good month to leave town a lot!

Benito is having a blast. Yesterday he got to help the Great Hunter Vlassic chow down on a fresh rabbit kill. Remember, that’s what dachshunds were bred for. Both dogs got a healthy fresh meal at least. And today he figured out that toys are fun and has been tossing two toys around and playing. that’s less icky.

Benito also is an incredible jumper. He can really launch himself into the air for long distances, to our surprise! He’s probably missing out on a career in agility work. Also, when he’s excited and barking with the other dogs because someone is here, he bounces on all four legs. I have always wanted a dog who could do that.

He’s fitting in. And he doesn’t care if I have ink on my face while ordering in a restaurant.

I’m sure glad it’s Friday.

I’m Stylin’

What’s your home decoration style?

I’m cheating and answering this because it’s late after a long day and getting two of three dogs swabbed for DNA testing. We are trying to figure out how to swab grumpy Harvey’s cheek. But anyway.

I know what breeds the other dogs are, so Vlassic doesn’t get swabbed.

My decorating style at this point in life is ranch eclectic, with a dose of hippie/witchy stuff. Lots of wood and natural stone for the ranch part, and art mostly by people I know and silly collectibles for the eclectic. All the Buddha statues, St. Brigid statues, and tarot stuff make up the rest.

And Lee contributes piles of stuff (me to some extent).

But it’s homey and comfortable, and I have lots of flowers and horses to cheer me up.

An old photo of my office, but it mostly looks like this.

I really enjoy looking at nicely decorated homes and read many magazines on architecture and interior design. I’m also fascinated by how homes looked in the past. But that doesn’t mean I want to live in a perfect environment. A little mess doesn’t bother me. I salute those of you who can’t abide clutter. It’s just not me.

Until next time!

Dream on

What’s your biggest dream?

Funny the prompt should ask. My tarot group met tonight, and the reading we did was about manifesting the future with guidance from the collective consciousness and universal spirit (something like that). And the cards I drew reflected my concerns about the state of the USA right now and my growing resolve to put in the work to do something about it.

I got the message that I need to first rest and recuperate (all that tooth stuff) and to turn away from paths that don’t serve me. That’s what the Michael Pollan book on consciousness was making me think, too.

But most important, I saw that while things are going to get bad for a while, probably very bad, there is a good chance we can all rebuild a nation with goodwill and harmony. And that’s my biggest dream, that I’ll live to see us figure out a system not run by corporations, super-elites, and their insane puppet leaders. I want to live where people can live differently, have different paths, and all that, but care for each other.

We have to be strong, have resolve, and believe we can create the world we envision. And if we fail, we will know we tried.

Book Report: A World Appears

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Michael Pollan. He fearlessly investigates what makes us human and is delightfully unafraid to test out his own ideas and find them wrong. A World Appears (2026) is his latest, an exploration into what it means to be conscious, and for that matter, what exactly consciousness is.

The title refers to what happens as we open our eyes from sleeping. A world appears. How does that work? Hint: the answer to the consciousness question is not really the goal of the book. The goal is to explore various ways of addressing “the big question” and how close they come to an answer.

Pollan interviews a wide range of fascinating scientists, deep thinkers, academics, and spiritual leaders in his quest. Some think they have the answers, some think they’re getting close, and others doubt we’ll figure consciousness out.

Mostly, Pollan drinks a lot of tea. If you listen to the audiobook you can make a drinking game where you down a shot of an interesting beverage every time he sits down with a pot of tea to interview someone. I guess consciousness scholars aren’t coffee drinkers. (Aside: Lee and I have a drinking game for every time an HGTV host says “pop of color”.)

Other than that quirk, I enjoyed reading along as Pollan thinks about what the experts tell him and points out where he thinks they have a point or are a little off. I was fascinated by the idea that consciousness is controlled by the cerebellum, not cortex, and I loved learning how many other living things may well be conscious, depending on how it’s defined.

Other parts of the book delve into whether machines can be conscious. All sorts of conflicting ideas come up in this part of the book. I will say I’m hoping Pollan’s conclusions on this one are right.

Fans of Pollan will not be surprised that psychedelics come into play when trying to figure out how to escape consciousness. Meditation is also invoked (and I’m more familiar with the brief flashes of transcendence from this method—brief—that’s why it’s a practice). It’s all fascinating.

One thing missing from the book is what happens when we are asleep. Are we completely unconscious? What do dreams have to do with our stream of consciousness? Maybe that’s another book.

All in all, this was a fun book that gave me much to think about and more tools in my toolbox to figure out what “I” am. It’s deep!

A fictional dining companion

If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be?

Just a quick one. I knew the answer to this one right off. I’d love to have dinner with Sherlock Holmes. I’d like him to tell me horrible facts about myself just from looking at me and proceed to tell me how insufferably boring I am.

Then I’d probably talk to John Watson.

And I choose Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, please.

Apps? What apps?

What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?

Great news for me—I have another fun question to answer while not much is going on around the ranch but work, heat, dogs, and my sore mouth. I have overdone the NSAIDs and it’s making my old lady red spots go into overdrive. The pain is a bit less, so I’ll cut down starting tonight.

Barely need to rub on the skin to get this. Yuck.

However, the question was about apps. Here’s what my phone has to deal with every day.

Merlin Bird ID: it has its own phone, so it’s on much of the day, but I only look at it every couple of hours. It’s very important for my bird data, you know. (Yeah, I’m such a scientist.)
Facebook: sorry, haters, but I keep up with old friends, new acquaintances, and lots of horses and dogs. I’m encouraged by the kindness and interesting ideas I come across. I skip repetitive ads based on the things I’ve been talking or thinking about, and only very rarely do I see offensive, ignorant, or mean content. I’ve curated my feed. No, I have no secret other than liking what I like and ignoring the rest.
Finch. I check this cute self-care app 3-4 times a day. It reminds me to do kind things and lets me engage in harmless play with a few friends. It’s really good for my mental health. I can send my friend code; just ask.
Crossword: the Redstone Games crossword app is great. There are themes, different creators whose puzzles you can play, and many levels of difficulty. There are always new games. It’s good for keeping your brain sprightly. I play a game or two per day. Lee is constantly playing.
INaturalist. I’d say I add one or two observations per day or hundreds when I’m traveling. I love to look up whatever plants, birds, insects, or other creatures are near me. It’s endlessly fascinating.
WordPress or JetPack or whatever they’re calling it. I do blog a while most days. Yesterday was too uneventful for me to dredge up anything, so I skipped. I like WordPress just fine. I have always enjoyed putting words on the internet and formatting them. It’s what I do. For me.
Others I use often are Clime weather (official live radar maps), Google for asking questions, LinkedIn to check on work buddies, Gmail for the occasional personal email, Zoom/Teams for chatting, the camera app (duh), and boring banking and financial apps.

Do I feel bad about any of it? Heck no. The only app I felt bad about using was Bejeweled. I used it to escape from my daily life for about ten years. Things got better and I stopped.

Benito is settling in well. He’s very attached to Lee.

No doubt younger readers have very different app preferences. These folks have never known a time without apps. I guess books and drawing paper were my “apps.” I got lost in them!

Make it go away

If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be?

I’ll tell you what trend I’d like to eliminate: charismatic psychopaths taking over the leadership of powerful countries and embarking on unstoppable campaigns to satisfy their need for praise and power.

Can we make this trend go away? Not without a destructive struggle, I fear.

Okay, people who came here to read the prompt response can stop reading. I’ll go on to ranch news. First, the dogs are making progress. And, hey, I discovered in the archives that we got Penney seven years ago this week, and she was my most recent acquisition. So we aren’t grabbing dogs Willy-nilly. (Kathleen rescued Goldie.)

Benito has started to both play with and assert himself with Harvey. I just hope they establish their boundaries quickly. It’s hard to keep B calm for his heart worm treatment when everyone wants to play and play. But they do sleep a lot.

We have noticed much less mounting and marking from Benito, which is really good. I’m not fond of that stuff.

As for the rest of us, we are muddling along, with no one feeling all that great. My jaw swelling has gone down, but I still hurt. I’ll let the dentist know, and I’m taking the antibiotics on schedule.

Sharing some white-mouthed day flowers, which got sprayed today. They were pretty, but it was time to trim some overgrowth.

Big thing for me: I am finally going through all my clothing from work and ranch and will be making some lucky thrift store shopper very happy. I got two boxes full of clothes today. More to come! This is one of my “issues,” having too many clothes. Comes from not having many growing up. But I go overboard. Sigh. I guess I could have worse issues (and probably do).

PS: haven’t lost a fish in my water garden! Yay!

Old technology memories

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

I still feel bad in the tooth department but I’m gonna answer this question anyway, since nothing exciting happened today(which is good). Anyway, I miss two things from the olden days of my youth, back in the 20th century.

One is standard transmissions in cars. It was just plain fun to drive a stick shift when I was younger. You felt like you were actually telling the car what to do, as opposed to today’s cars that control the speed, yell at you if you stray out of your lane, and park for you. Cars used to be fun.

The other thing I miss is just for the fun aspect, and that’s intercom systems in homes and offices. It was so much fun to yell at your siblings on intercoms (we didn’t have one, but well-off friends did.) I know it was supposed to be so cool to play the radio throughout the house…but I liked paging parents. And oh, my, did we have fun in my first “real” job in Illinois, calling each other into our offices and being silly until we were reminded that it WAS a business.

All I know is we removed a lot of those systems when remodeling houses.

Genuine news! Finally have the first half of the year of temperatures in my blanket. July was hot!

I’m trying really hard to feel less down in the dumps and to make sure my mouth is healing. The dogs are still entertaining, though!

My excuse was flimsy

What is the best excuse you have heard lately?

Today’s question was quite appropriate. I did something monumentally dumb and my best excuse is that I read too fast. My other excuse is mouth pain making me grumpy and prone to misinterpreting things. So I embarrassed myself in front of many Internet strangers (and a person I know).

Positive note: our property is covered with these beautiful golden rain lilies. A reward from the storms.

What happened is I got a text telling me that my subscription club was ending and that I had until September to use all my points or they’d expire. Or something to that effect. My mind immediately leapt to my monthly subscription to nail strips from Color Street (such a weird name, I know). I look forward to the monthly surprises, so I got sad.

You know, my extreme nail vanity I can’t control for long.

I immediately told my friend who sells the strips, who was shocked. I then posted about it on a Facebook group for super-users of the strips. Before I was able to see any responses, Rebecca asked me to show her the text I’d gotten. I then saw my mistake. It wasn’t my Color Play subscription that was ending, but the Color Club for my hair coloring stuff, Overtone. Oops.

By the time I got back on Facebook, a tizzy was occurring in the nail group, since no one else had heard anything, including the “stylists” (MLM marketing term). I quickly changed my post and apologized, though people kept demanding I change my original post, which I had already done. I felt so embarrassed.

Luckily people were mostly forgiving and one even asked about Overtone.

But wow, my excuse for that mistake, while honest, was merely the best I could do, not a good one.

What makes us ourselves?

Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are?

Oh. I have been reading so much about the self, nature versus nurture, what the heck reality is…my main conclusion boils down to:

I don’t know and don’t think it matters

This doesn’t imply that it’s not fascinating to seek insight into how experiences and genetics affect your physical and mental health — after all I enjoyed The Myth of Normal just recently, and I’m currently reading about the nature of consciousness.

Flowers are conscious beings, according to Michael Pollan.

My point is that I’m fine not knowing the answers to these questions. In fact, I think I enjoy pondering the possibilities and learning about other scientists and spiritual practitioners propose so much that if we knew exactly how much nature and nurture contribute to who we are, I’d be sad.

Perhaps it’s human nature to want an explanation for what we perceive. On the other hand, for some cultures and individuals, not knowing is something to be treasured, a great mystery. (I do not advocate for choosing ignorance of course—you need to know what you don’t know.)

Right now, I’m choosing to be curious while enjoying being alive without really knowing what that means. I’d make a lot more sense if I were more awake and less achy from the tooth thing. I feel pain, therefore I am, said some wise person.

Update on dogs. Benito is fine. It’s hard to stop him and Carlton from playing in the evening, though. Curiously, the dynamic has changed, and Carlton is now doing dominance behavior over Benito. Hmm. Maybe they’re equals now. In any case, they sure stick together.