We got two big things finished over on the Pope Residence project today. First is the one that matters: the stair railings! Ooh.
The masterpiece! (I’ve removed most of the blue tape since).
Everything finished getting painted. Once it was dry, Chris had to attach the pieces to each other. There was no way to do it outdoors, so he very carefully used the acetylene torch.
Welding action
The results looked like this.
Welded but unpainted.
After that, the welds got painted. Carefully since it was indoors.
Shiny and black!
The trim on the other side of the stairs is next. But it’s already pretty glorious.
A work of art, and functionality.
Rugs?
Yes, the new extreme pink rugs arrived and are in my office. I also brought my favorite heirloom table over for the lounge corner.
The extremely pink chair will look great there.
Lee and Chris also brought my new filing cabinet over, and it’s by the smaller pink rug.
It fits. Yay.
I found I had a little spare time today, so I put the crystals on the old chandelier we painted white.
Shiny.
I am not putting the ugly plastic bits back on. Maybe I’ll get other crystals or something. As it is, it makes a nice pattern on the ceiling.
Love that ceiling.
Now there are just a few touch-ups and such left, but we’re just about ready to get final inspection.
Rip the bull calf has had a lot of adventures in his short bovine career. He was born! Something happened! He rumbled around! He was in a scary place with many frightened animals! He rode in another rumbly thing! A human fed him milk! He was in a grassy place. He slept. Many humans and dogs appeared. He ate and slept.
Sleep and eat.
Then, one day the human who fed him and the large human picked him up (he’s a small calf still) and put him in another rumbly thing, only one that smelled better and wasn’t so rumbly. They called the SUV.
Rumble rumble.
They rumbled along for a while. When Rip had to poop, they stopped and took the poop away. Weird. After some time, they let him out, and he was in a new place! It had other cows and calves. And different friendly humans, one who appeared to be ready to calve soon, herself.
She has a calf in there! See!
Rip liked the place. He still got his milk, but also had a herd to hang with, when they’d let him. There was some tasty grass, too.
A few days later, though, they put him back in the fancy rumbly thing. He had to poop in the same place, and also peed. The female human said she sure was glad they put a tarp in the back seat. So, that’s what the strange slippery brown dirt he was standing on was called.
Next time the rumbling stopped, he was back at the first place with all the dogs. He liked to try to play with the little white one, but the male human didn’t like it.
I’ve put on a little weight!
The other female made him feel better by giving him a delicious kind of feed she called a peppermint horse treat. That was fun to chew.
More horse treats, please! (He won’t get any!)
There was a rectangular prickly thing in the wheelbarrow next to Rip’s pen. It smelled really good. The big male human broke some of it off and tried to get Rip to nibble on it. Nope.
No, thanks. Sniff, sniff.
Then he set some of it on the ground. Rip changed his mind about it, after a lot of sniffing. He put a bit of it in his mouth and chewed. Not bad!
Mmmm.
The humans called it hay, and they kept telling him it was just like grass, just dry. Rip, having so far only lived in the height of summer drought, thought all grass was pretty dry.
Hay is good.
It was time for a nap. His plan is to eat and nap enough to get big and strong, so no human can pick him up and rumble him off again.
Shh, don’t tell him about trailers, and how he’s being trained to walk on a lead for easy loading. Dream on, Rip.
This will be a fun weekend! It’s already been great, because I got to go meet my friend Janet at Bird and Bee Farm, because she needed new hens. Her “ladies” are all retired. I’ve known Janet since soon after I moved to Austin, and we have had many adventures together. Many adventures. She now lives in Groesbeck with her partner and horses, just far enough away to make visiting not too easy. So, we haven’t seen each other in a while.
So, we were glad to see each other at the chicken farm. I showed Janet all the hard work our Master Naturalist team had done with the Wildscape project, and she really liked some of Catherine and Rosie’s great recycled decor ideas.
This chair fountain’s particularly cute.
I was all excited about some butterflies, and tried really hard to get good pictures, but these pipevine swallowtails are not the kind that sits still. My best picture had something weird in the background.
What’s that behind the butterfly?
It was one of the resident guinea fowl, just clucking away at me and peeping over the flowers.
Howdy!
Eventually we got in, after we convinced Gene I wasn’t here just for Master Naturalist stuff. Janet was after black hens, because apparently hawks don’t go after them, because they look like crows, and crows are mean to hawks. Huh. She got three young Jersey Giants and three australorps, all lovely and dusky beauties.
Native Rio Grande turkeys, since I didn’t get photos of Janet’s new pullets.
Well, I couldn’t exactly go there and come up empty handed, especially since our hen to rooster ratio is so low. I needed three hens. Conveniently, the oldest pullets they had were beautiful, as well. They are called Blue Star or Sapphire Gem, and apparently are a new heat-tolerant breed from Czech breeders. I got two of them, one of which has some gold in her neck feathers. She’s Star and the other is Sapphire. I am not creative today.
At least one is in the sun here. That’s Star.
Sapphire is in front. Bruce wants some action.
You can sorta see the pretty feathers.
My favorite thing about them is that they are large. They won’t have to stay separated too long, though they need growth food another month or two. They have beautiful dark brown eyes, too.
The other pullet I got is a Welsummer, which I had one of before in my first batch, but didn’t last too long due to the owl. No owl will get Butternut, though! She’s safe with us in the cage. I love her buttery yellow legs, which gave her the name, and she has cool light brown eyes that match her body feathers. She’s a bit smaller than the other two, and pretty friendly.
Pretty baby.
I’ll need to re-hook the water hose, and maybe move one of the pipe feeders over to the baby area, but otherwise, they should be fine. Now if I can just figure out how to stop Clarence from crowing under Jim’s RV. That has to be loud!
Anyhow, it was wonderful to catch up with Janet, who I’m going to spend more time with not on a mission very soon. We just wish we could set and eat a meal together, but neither of us wants to chance the germs.
Sometimes, when you’re walking on a hot day and trying to ignore the pain in your legs from climbing hills (you can tell I was in Austin), you get a sudden insight into how communication works and doesn’t work, and your life suddenly becomes better. Well, it happened at least once, and that was yesterday.
I was just enjoying myself not thinking about work during my one-hour break between meetings, and I started to think about how some of the people in my life announce their plans/intentions/commitments. They state them very firmly. “Things will be this way from now on.” “I will act on this plan going forward.” Things like that.
The post is about language, and I think this is cute. Photo by @NAO via Twenty20
In my little head, I interpret such statements as firm commitments. I then adjust my own expectations to go with these plans. If someone says, “I’m going to do this twice a week,” I expect that to happen twice a week. If someone says, “This is the next project I plan to do,” I get my inner expectations set that way.
This is not the other person’s problem; it’s mine. This leads to much disappointment and confusion when life happens, plans change, or the dreaded “spontaning” occurs (that’s what Lee and I call being spontaneous). I get worked up about people not keeping their commitments, or confused when I hear the twice a week thing didn’t happen starting the next week.
Javascript is inside my head. No wonder I get confused. Image by @Mehaniq via Twenty20,
My insight was that when people around me make these declarations, they are not stating a commitment, they are stating an intention. They’re not stating a definite plan, but more of a tentative plan for the moment. And that’s perfectly fine, because that’s how stating plans or intentions work for them. And besides, even people like me, who state things with all expectations that the plan will be stuck to, sometimes have to change things when circumstances change. Huh, I’d been being rather rigid in my expectations of others!
They sure do. Image by @MPstockart via Twenty20
So, now that I’ve reset my expectations, I’ve a word of advice for those of you who didn’t get this concept hammered into their heads while studying linguistics (almost everyone!).
Your internal set of meanings for words and phrases may actually NOT coincide (probably don’t coincide) exactly with other people’s.
me
Language is really, really ambiguous. That’s why we rely so hard on tone of voice, facial expression, past knowledge of the person we’re talking to, and sincere hope to communicate anything at all. We all have our own internal grammar, semantics (meanings for words), and pragmatic style.
Now you know why I only communicate with snuggles. They are universal.
So, when there are misunderstandings, which there inevitably will be, let’s not be so hard on each other. It’s a miracle that we manage to communicate at all!
I just wanted to say how happy I am with the amazing job our little family team has been doing as we work together to build our Hearts, Homes and Hands (HHH) business over the past year plus. We each have contributed time, effort, and sweat to the endeavor. And it’s been quite a learning process! No doubt it will continue to be.
I rarely get to share decorative plants, so here are some I saw walking around our Austin neighborhood.
I encourage all the readers of this blog to also follow the HHH blog, which features lots of writing on elder care and health issues, along with business updates. That’s where you hear more from our chief hermit, Lee, too.
My contribution is helpful, but minimal, since I have another full-time job at the moment. I do the blog, maintain the Facebook page and LinkedIn, and write some newspaper articles. And I help with renovating our buildings by selecting materials and such.
On the other hand, Kathleen, Lee, and Chris have been working so, so hard that it’s been hard on their mental and physical health. Still they’ve kept going, and it shows by how much the business has grown!
Lee has become quite the financial analyst for a writer, or for anyone. He helps us see where we’ve been and where we’re going. His attention to detail awes me.
I’ve mentioned Chris and his work many times here, since I enjoy sharing rehab updates. His ability to design structures and then build them has been amazing to watch. The stairs! The crown molding! My bathroom! The ceilings! I can’t wait until he can have a team helping him, which will be a lot easier when the office is done. I’m really grateful for his patience and willingness to do this work.
And wow, Kathleen has done a yeoman’s job of getting us set up, keeping state-required records, training the initial staff, and recruiting customers. It’s really a job for more than one person, and it’s been hard on her! Many days she just comes home and goes to bed, unable to deal with anything else! I don’t blame her one bit.
I’m glad she’s got enough staff trained to help with the day-to-day operations of our business, because I know she will really be an amazing marketer when her time is less booked. Well, and when the pandemic makes doing things in person a challenge.
That’s the thing, we’ve done darned well to be still going after the past few months. I’m so grateful for all our talented family members, and for the great staff that is providing the much-needed personal assistance service to this county. Kudos to all.
I bit the bullet and got my hair cut today. The place I go made a lot of changes for safety, like a whole bunch of plexiglass, so I wasn’t too worried about going. I waited in my car until I was called in, then went over to the stylist’s station. I stated that I wanted my hair cut, then we headed over to get it washed.
Hair is much shorter but still pale blue.
That’s where I saw it. Some lovely young woman was sitting in the chair closest to the hair-washing sinks. She had her mask on, all right, but her perky little nose was poking proudly out above the top of the mask. It surprised me, because I guess I thought her stylist would have reminded her how one is supposed to wear a mask to protect others from your germs.
Proper mask wearing, though crooked (pre haircut)
Since I was so surprised, I just gave her a long look through my squinty li’l Suna eyes, hoping they conveyed my disapproval.
As I sat in my chair watching Dan cut little triangles of hair, I kept wondering if I should have said something to the nose displaying woman. Excuse me, but your mask has slipped down? Hey, I can see your appendage!
Gaudy mask with giant earrings. Still safe!
Then I countered myself with the fact that I was far from her and she was facing the other way. And is it any of my business to tell her how to behave in public? People are pretty edgy about masks in the US, after all. Why start a fight? She wasn’t coughing on me.
On the other hand, we were indoors, which is risky even with all the plexiglass. She was being inconsiderate, at the least. Dangerous to some people’s thinking. What to do?
I look as tired of pictures of me in masks as you probably are. Also my eye size discrepancy is getting worse as my eyelids droop.
Well, I did take care of the people around me. I kept my mask on, even when big hunks of hair fell in it. I even tightened it when it began to slide. So, I was a good role model.
I wore this sloth mask today.
But I keep second guessing myself. What would you do?
Yesterday after work, I snatched Vlassic out of the RV where he was hanging out with Lee’s brother, and invited him into the car. There, he settled down for a nice petting session while we drove to Austin. Yay, we got to go see our other house!
Yay, in Austin I get to shred toys.
When we got there, he greeted his friend Pickle, then insisted on taking a walk, you know, to see if all the bushes were still there. They were. After that, he destroyed a few toys, napped, and hung out with me until bedtime. At bedtime, he curled up right next to me and slept until morning.
Here’s Vlassic helping me work.
That’s not remarkable, really, but the way he just slid back into his old routine like he’d been doing it all along, it just amazed me. Yesterday he’d been rolling in the dirt, sitting under the RV, visiting the horses, chasing and eating many grasshoppers, and when lucky enough to find one, harassing toads. He is fixated on barking at toads.
He’s now helping me work in the kitchen.
We’ve just had our 2-year anniversary of sharing our lives with Vlassic, who we now think came from the Ben Arnold area (due to the large amount of very black dogs a particular female, who is now neutered and living in Colorado, had been churning out). He is the most laid-back and flexible dog I have ever come across.
I’m also cute outside. I only have one pose, apparently.
Wherever this little dude is, he’s at home. He loves Austin, he loves Cameron, he loves the indoors, and he loves the outdoors. He doesn’t chase chickens, and I think no longer chases small donkeys. While he occasionally doesn’t like a dog or person very much, I find he has pretty good taste in such things.
Honestly, it feels like a miracle that he showed up one day and I got to have him as my companion. The worst thing, for me, about the pandemic has been that I don’t get to spend as much time with Vlassic as I used to, because Penney scared him away from coming into the house. It’s weird, because they get along great outside, but he just won’t come into our house anymore.
He and Gracie are our chicken protectors and mini guard dogs at the ranch. Look at those tongues.
On the other hand, Jim sure likes having him around. So, now Vlassic is providing companionship to both of us. What a fine companion he is, too!
I think my high school cafeteria used to serve “tuna surprise,” and I want to assure you that I’m not eating my chickens. But I did get a nice surprise this morning!
I went out to let the chickens and guinea fowl out this morning before work, and was chatting with Fancy Pants, Bertie, and Gertie as usual, when I heard the sounds of some rooster-on-hen action going on. I turned my head to see Clarence working away on a black-and-white hen. Since I have three of those, I couldn’t tell who it was until the act was finished.
There’s a reason I’m running, and it’s not to get a grasshopper.
Lo and behold, it was Hedley, the former Hedy, who I’d renamed because I thought they were a rooster. Well, I guess not, since neither of the other roosters has shown an interest in each other, which rules out rooster love. This is a real relief for me, since my hen to rooster ratio is already a bit off (need more hens). AND we have discovered that Gray Gertie is a guinea cock, not a guinea hen (based on his calls, and now his unfortunate hen-chasing behavior).
Gertie is a growing boy, so now poor Hedly has to run from both him and Clarence (and Bruce, who was lollygagging in the henhouse when I took this).
Now I know who’s laying the white eggs, too, since Hedley is way bigger than Henley, the other Ancona hen, who has a pink comb (for those of you keeping notes). It’s always something with these guys. At least all is well in the world of Big Red, the hen who is a member of the horse herd.
I’m a horse. A shiny red horse.
I got this photo of her yesterday, running over to the water bucket when she realized it was her favorite time of day: when the water is fresh and full for her easy access. That is one pampered solo hen, with her special feed bag of treats and water bucket.
This morning, Lee was reading over my recent posts, and he spotted a couple of typos. While I was fixing one, I found another. It’s great to have another set of eyes to look over things for you.
One of the errors was pretty funny, in which I called Lee’s brother, Jim, his father. He’s Chris’s father, not Lee’s! That gave us a good laugh.
Then, Lee said he wrote about being grateful for typos in his journal today (he always says what he’s grateful for as he plans his day and does the dozens of other activities his journaling system entails. He kindly shared it with me:
That says:
Gratitude: Typos and awkward, ambiguous sentences are mistakes we all make and I believe we can all admit to. They give us the opportunity to practice gracefully admitting our imperfections. Hopefully we can apply these lessons to other areas of our lives.
Lee Bruns, personal journal
I thought that was a lovely way to look at our human slip-ups, as chances to practice grace and acknowledge our all-too-human slips.
What’s not to love?
That said, you can always let me know if you see a typo, or if you don’t understand something I’m trying to convey here. Since I’m mostly just “thinking as I type” here, I’m bound to get lost at times. I appreciate the chance to interact with readers, anyway!
And now, I must shift to what will be a difficult volunteer group meeting, if they get to the hard topic before I have to leave for a paid work meeting.
Before I explain that, I want to share that Apache, my beloved paint gelding, is feeling a whole lot better. He’s able to be in the little pasture with the poor quality grass 24/7 again. The next goal would be to get to hang out with the other horses again, but that might not happen.
How we know he’s feeling fine again is a little story. Sara and I were doing horse chores together Saturday night. She remembered she needed to pick some peppers over by the cabin, so we walked Apache over there as part of his exercise program, such as it is. I dropped his lead to let him graze over by the old chicken coop, while we went over to the vegetable garden. I got all excited over some overripe tomatoes for the chickens, and didn’t think about Apache.
Suddenly, he made that horse alarm sound. I turned around to see him take off trotting down the drive, Arabian tail flying high. Next, I heard loud braying on the other side of the huge bales of silage. Apparently, Fiona had panicked because she couldn’t see Apache.
This is the face me made. I didn’t get any actual photos of the event, since I was busy making sure he was all right.
As I followed him, I saw Fiona breathlessly arrive, having been “stuck” in the race (not really). They still appeared a bit wound up, and sure enough, they took off again, heading to the other two horses, who were nearby in their pasture. THIS is when I knew Apache felt okay. He proceeded to not just trot, but canter over there, with a few added jumps. Obviously his feet felt good.
The two of them visited the other horses, then came back to me and Sara, breathing hard and ready to go back in their area and eat their dinner. Yep, he’s feeling better.
Evidence of Pain
Yesterday, we were looking at Apache’s feet, and it was really easy to see a line, about an inch above the end of his hooves. When Sara picked up his front feet, we could easily see where his hoof wall had separated from the inner part. That’s why he could barely walk for so long. Ow!
See those black lines? Pretty obvious.
Luckily, hooves grow out, and now the separated area seems to be in the part he can’t feel anymore (like the ends of our fingernails versus the nail beds). I’m glad we were able to help him and keep the issue from becoming chronic.
Those cracks near the front edge are what hurt.
Now we have to get some muscle back on him, and make sure he doesn’t get any thinner. Wow, this is the first time we’ve ever had THAT weight problem on him!
The sun has now set on this issue. Are you tired of my sunsets yet?
The Hermits' Rest 