work – Page 20 – The Hermits' Rest

Ups and Downs of Small-Town Businesses

Now that I think Pickle and Vlassic are over their foam-eating issues, I can return to other topics. One that has especially interested me is how people in and around Cameron feel about the customer service mentality in the area. I may have mentioned that a couple days ago, Lee wrote a blog post about why Cameron has such a hard time keeping restaurants open.

Lee’s photo of the former Sonic, now up for sale.

Usually, our blog posts and Facebook business page posts get between 100-200 views/hits each. Not this one. The Facebook one has 2500 views and 14 shares. Mandi said the one on her page also got lots of shares. The website stats look hilarious. There were 1500 hits that day, which made the previous week look totally flat.

So, yeah, Lee’s thoughts on this topic struck a nerve. I’ve been hanging around Cameron for just nine years now, but I’ve seen so many places open and close right up. One has done it at least four times (I’m not naming names, just noting facts). When I talked to a former cafe owner, she said people would just walk off their jobs or not show up because they didn’t feel like it. Turnover was huge. Just a week or two ago we went to a local place where only the cashier had showed up, so she was trying to wait tables. It didn’t go well.

I Think I Need to Rest

I don’t think I’ve just done nothing since last Wednesday. I’m so glad to be sitting in my living room in Austin with Anita, with my honeysuckle whiskey. Not in a meeting.

Today I was still in Cameron, so I met with Lee and Kathleen about Hearts Homes and Hands. The dogs helped. There I found out my office is the old storage room. That will be fun.

I ran from there to move the horses back to their usual pasture, since I got home too late from the hospital last night (my sister is recovering just fine).

Next I met with Mandi about our little event venue, since it’s now getting bookings. Then I worked a while. Then a meeting with a coworker that happens weekly. Then met with our contractor on the Pope residence. That was fun.

I got home, exhausted. Looked at email. Oh…there’s a Friends of LLL board meeting. There, I volunteered to be secretary since we only have four members temporarily.

By the way, the Christmas branch is now a Valentine branch.

Hooray. I then got to drive like crazy to Austin to get to my visit with the ole therapist where I said I’m fine but too busy. After that I tried to buy sheets for our weird Sleep Number Bed that raises up. Nope. Went to the wrong one of 800 mattress stores in Austin.

While I was writing this, three people needed me on Messenger. I am a failed Hermit. And my eyes are tired.

Tomorrow? Ha! Two stressful meetings and one lovely chiropractor appointment. And time to walk at lunch. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday have meetings in the evening. I think next Sunday will be my next day of rest.

I hope the fog dies off by then. It was foggy almost all day today! And honest, I enjoy everything I do!

What are YOU up to? Get some rest.

I Want to Show You This Historical Beauty!

While this is my personal and ranch blog, I just can’t resist sharing something we are doing in one of our businesses, Hearts Homes and Hands, which is a personal assistance service for Milam and surrounding counties.

We just opened the business, and are currently sharing the lovely old church building where we run a real estate business and host meetings/events. It’s fine, but not terribly accessible for people dealing with physical handicaps, and we’re a bit cramped.

The old Pope residence, most recently the Taylor residence.

So, we were pretty excited when we were finally able to close on this amazing old house with a cool history. We’d bought it from a really great family that was having trouble keeping up with the payments, due to family illnesses and other issues. We were happy to help out and even more happy to finally own the first brick home built in the city of Cameron, in 1905.

Here’s where the Pope family are buried, in the old part of Cameron’s main cemetery. Mandi and I searched for this last year.

The house was originally owned by a doctor Pope and his family, who were beloved in the city’s early years. Their piano-teacher daughter lived there until the late 1950s, using the bottom floor as a boarding house for income.

Many changes had happened to the house over 115 years, and when we got it, there was a lot of paneling, wallpaper, and interesting interior changes. The biggest change was when the previous owners hired a contractor to install a staircase. It wasn’t exactly safe. (The house had an exterior staircase, since the upstairs started out as a home and the downstairs a doctor’s office, then a boarding house for many years.)

These Eyes…See Weird Things

Time for a ramble! The things my eyes have been seeing…and not seeing. First off, my eyes are on my mind. Yesterday was my annual eye doctor appointment, which I generally view as all those annoying things I have to look at so that I can later have lots of fun looking at frames. I do so love me some eyeglasses frames, and Helen and Gloria at the Far West Optical Land of Fancy Frames are happy to indulge me. (I know there are fancier frame shops in the area, but you could never get me out of them.)

Yesterday, though, the new-to-me young man who did the preliminary stuff was all solemn, and informed me that my exam counted as a medical one, so my vision coverage wouldn’t accept it. He was really worried I couldn’t pay, or something. I never could get it out of my mouth that I had enough in my Flex account for it.

The exam took 1.5 hours! Mostly Barbara, the eye doctor/friend from church, was looking for some drusen in my eyes. However, she could not find them. I had no idea what the big deal was until I looked it up and found that drusen are the first stage of macular degeneration. They are also fatty deposits. Probably my recent diet change has positively affected them. Yay, I’m not going blind.

Future eyewear. The orange is more of a coral and according to the gals, made me look like Sharon Osborne.

Also I picked out some new sunglasses and regular glasses, and got a good deal on them (a rare thing in this place). The sunglasses have Liberty of London fabric in them, though Helen kept calling it Lloyd’s of London. It gave us all a chuckle. I do enjoy that place.

Other Things My Eyes Saw

I’ll just share this one other thing that made me laugh. I was trying to get holiday pictures taken for our real estate and personal assistance services companies today. No one dressed for it (because I hadn’t asked them to), so we held our packages from the float.

It was really, really hard to get us looking good, but Mandi got some really funny candid shots of the Hearts Homes and Hands team. I cannot un-see them.

I’ll be putting the GOOD pictures up on Facebook, but here is the Hermits’ Rest Enterprises team looking as good as we can:

And here is the HHH team:

Doing our best. I could perhaps have found a more flattering ensemble, but, hey, it has a donkey on it.

Holiday greetings from us all!

Ha Ha! Today Didn’t Suck!

What do you know! A group of people determined to have fun despite setbacks CAN do it. My little department at work is like that little engine that could in the kids’ story. We just keep on doing good stuff and having a mostly positive attitude.

We had three people with sickness or sick children, but ended up having a lot of fun at the little party we had at the Bobcat Lair house this afternoon.

It helps to have a pro party planner on the team. Maggie chose a great caterer who brought a traditional holiday meal to the house, while we did appetizers and desserts. I picked out decor items. It ended up so pretty!

And I just wish I could make green beans as good as theirs. Yum. I managed not to overdo carbs, too! But I enjoyed myself!

Jen dressed tastefully but festively. I screamed Christmas.

The best part was our white elephant exchange. We encouraged fun and funny gifts, and for a small group we had our share of great ones.

Beautiful sardines. Jason said he’d eat them.

Marlene says, “Hmm,” about the Mac and cheese

In the food department, Anita and I found a sampler of sardines. And Maggie brought a dozen Velveeta Shells and Cheese. There was a hilarious game of Golden Girls Trivial Pursuit and one called Kenny G Keeping It Saxy. That got stolen a lot.

Vlassic was the most popular boy in the room. He hardly barked at all, and only stole one giant cookie. I’m proud of my dog.

What I enjoyed most from the humans was seeing all of us relaxed and happy. I work with some very smart and humorous people. It’s sure good to enjoy each other and get to know each other better. It helps that we could all talk together, because there weren’t too many or too few.

Book Report: Can We, Should We, Be “Happier Now?”

They started a book club at work, where everyone is to read some self help book. Even though I had to miss the first meeting, I have been dutifully reading Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Everyday Moments (Even the Difficult Ones), by Nataly Kogan. Kogan is a Russian immigrant who founded the “Happier” app, which I used for a little while then got nothing out of, because no one else I knew was using it and I probably didn’t quite “get it” at the time. Still, I figured this lady would know something about happiness, since it was her job.

I was dubious about this book, to start out with. After all, I’ve read plenty of self help books about learning to love myself as I am, embrace my imperfections, and be kind to myself. I have said more than once that Brené Brown saved my life and that I should re-read The Gifts of Imperfection annually. Her books are how I became the much-less neurotic Suna who writes these blogs.

I told myself that, since I have already turned around my negative self-talk (I scare myself sometimes when I find my inner voice saying stuff like, “I feel great!” or “I’m happy today.”), I really don’t need another book on this topic. Of course, I conveniently forgot that I vowed to read books on this kind of thing yearly, to remind myself of how I want to be in the world.

TEAM: It Sorta Has “Me” in It

Well, apparently I did NOT have an original thought on this topic.

How many times have you heard the saying that “there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’?” More than enough, I’m sure. It hints that we should all be selflessly working together to achieve our organizational goals, a thing that totally goes against the annoying American worship of independence, yee haw.

I admit that I have always wanted to be a member of a team. Gosh, if only I wasn’t small, chubby, and extremely slow, I could have even been on a sports team at some point in my life. But, though I was very accurate at kicking and throwing a football, girls couldn’t play on those teams (and my distance sucked). As a young adult, I was politely asked to stop participating on my husband’s volleyball team, because they were actually competitive. Sigh.

Building Things: Floats, Chicken Coops, More

Hiya hiya (a brand of knitting needles), everyone. I’ve been trying to write this all day, but I can’t complain, because my lunch hour, when I often write, was pleasantly filled with a nice conversation and lunch with my friend Melissa. We had one of our usual hour-long regurgitation of the highs and lows of our lives since we last saw each other, which was way more fun than sitting at my desk typing!

Harvey supervises the painting of our giant wooden Hermann house.

Yesterday was an equally full day. Kathleen and Chris made it to Cameron Saturday evening, so we set out to do on Sunday all the things we’d originally planned to do over the whole Thanksgiving week. Not everything got done, but we sure did a LOT. We’re really grateful to Chris for how hard he worked.

Saturday we started out working on our float the the Cameron Christmas Parade. The good news is that we already have a truck and a trailer, so yay. And another good thing is that a marvelous invention, the battery-operated Christmas light, has enabled us to light the float without putting a big ole generator on the back of the pickup.

Vlassic is dubious about the quality of my tree construction. Hey, it’s worth every penny of the $30 they paid for it.

Hugs-giving OR What Are Your Traditions?

Apparently the DOG tradition is “Thankstuffing” according to the Bark Box people, who sent us a nice stuffed turkey toy for Vlassic to destroy.

Admittedly, I am one of those people really uncomfortable with the traditional US Thanksgiving origin story, especially since I have ancestors who were there on both sides of that particular piece of history. Probably most of us who are descended from the early settlers in the US are like that, since the settlers and the people who were already there seemed to hook up a lot when they weren’t attacking each other. As with most historical eras, I have a feeling that there were people who were good to each other and those who were not. Anyway…

The cactus in the kitchen window also wants to celebrate. Ooh, Aah.

…what I do like about Thanksgiving is the idea of an entire day to remember to be thankful for the abundance you have, your family, and your friends. That’s what I celebrate every year…that and delicious food, especially my oyster cornbread dressing and my orange/ginger cranberry sauce. I could probably get through the day with just those and a baked sweet potato.

Who, Me? Hypochondriac? Paranoid?

What in the world would lead me to say this? Well, things have just been a bit…unbalanced this week. I’ve felt a little “off” all week, and have done some really goofy things that aren’t like me.

This is the can of delicious water that didn’t want to go in my mouth.

The biggest example is suddenly forgetting how to drink a beverage. I was sitting in my living room, watching television or reading, and I was really thirsty for that cold, fresh lemon-flavored water I’d gotten out of the refrigerator. So, while still focused on my other task, I picked it up and briskly poured it into my lap.

That certainly surprised the dog. But, really, I forgot how to put a drink to my lips? It’s like my body had a glitch. Of course, once that happened, I’ve been alert to any other motor-skills issues, so when I trip and almost fall on a tiny raised part of a sidewalk, drop what I’m carrying, etc., I think, “Oh no, I’m getting some disease.”