Happy Friday, reader friends. Before I start out on my assigned topic, I’d like to say hello to a faithful reader, Catherine, who informed me last night that I’d missed posting for a couple of days, and that totally messed up her night-time routine. That made my day!
Penney and I thank you for reading!
I will do my best to post at least a little something every day, so she’ll have something to read before bed. But, there will be occasional days when I have so much work or am having so much fun that I don’t get to type! Let’s hope for no more days when I’m just so sad I don’t want to blather on about my mundane stuff, which happened earlier in the week.
Dogs!
Today was a big day over at the Hermits’ Rest. We try to be responsible pet owners, even though that can be a bit pricey when you have 5 dogs and 2 equines. The first thing that needed to be done was to get our little Penney spayed, so in case a roving Man Dog shows up, we don’t get more red mutts.
Yesterday was totally lost for blogging, since I had zero minutes of downtime all day. Not that it was bad! I had a wonderful catch-up lunch with my friend and former co-worker, Melissa. We took turns updating each other on the past few months of our lives. I am so happy she loves her new job and is incredibly fit and glowing with inner peace. It’s good to be around people like that!
Once I got home from work (where I was doing fun stuff and figuring out answers to hard problems), the rest of the evening was consumed by trying to put together the new wine/shoe room furniture that had arrived that day.
Russ is all happy here, because he can find all the pins and such to build the first piece of furniture.
We lucked out in that we canceled a meeting of our Hermit Haus coworkers, but Russell, my former co-worker and business partner, had already blocked off the time, so he showed up to help us decipher the instructions for the two items of furniture we’d bought.
I promised I’d write about something less controversial today. And I will. Before I start, I want to share that I took my post about getting to know people unlike myself and wrote a version for real estate investors. It needs to be said there, too, so we can all meet our goals.
Okay. Tea.
My workplace in Austin is a hotbed of foodies and coffee/tea fanatics. That’s given me the chance to try many different beverages through the years. Last week it was both tea and coffee. Tea first.
Chriztine was in town, and while here she checked out one of our many Asian markets. There she found an unfamiliar ball-shaped tea that she didn’t know what it was. So of course, she bought some.
Hey, if you know what this says, let me know. Isn’t the dried lime cool?
It turned out to be tiny dried limes stuffed with black tea. It was a kind she liked. But there were no brewing instructions. The first time, she put the whole ball in hot water, thinking maybe it would bloom or something.
I’m really having a harder than usual time listening to people lumping me in with some group of tantrum-prone babies because I have differing opinions from them. I’m not using my best words, either, which doesn’t help. I can work on me, though, after listening to my friends’ criticisms of me.
I am not Supergirl. I’m fallible human woman.
It is so hard to not stereotype groups of people when people say stuff like this to and about me:
Attack when the opinion differs. Humiliate when you don’t get your own way. Scream in people’s faces like a spoiled child when you can’t make someone succumb to your way of thinking. They are a bunch of spoiled brats who don’t know how to communicate, they never had to. They were led to believe no one loses, that someone calling you a name will destroy who you are instead of defending yourself, they were taught any college degree is worth an above average wage, even though it might have been in fashion, or liberal arts! We used to sit, have discussions, not arguments. We never disowned our friends and families because we disagreed with their policies. We never had to convince our friends, we only gave our viewpoints and that was ok. This new political party is a rude, childish, a true embarrassment to us all.
a guy on Facebook who I don’t know
Wow, I’d said that some people find it really important to own objects designed for killing, while other people want to have more peaceful, secure lives. I do realize that when people expect a certain type of words to come out of people they don’t like as a group, they will interpret the words in the worst way possible. And I am NOT at my word-smithing best today. I am sorry for that, honest!
Summary
Anyway, gun-loving friends, I do not think you all want to kill people. Pacifist friends, I am against killing people, so would use the shotgun I own only to scare away animals. That’s just me. You feel how you want to feel.
I really DO want to sit and have discussion. And folks, name-calling may well make you feel better, but I don’t like it. Why? Not because it hurts my feelings. No, because it stops any rational dialog in its tracks and just leads to escalating labeling and ranting, not listening. Or, as in my case, I just leave the “conversation” and concentrate on places where I actually can engage in dialogue and learn from others.
When you feel attacked, you defend, even if you don’t want to. So, this is my public apology to anyone I’ve been unfair to on social media. Now you know why I’be been trying to keep quiet. I will work on figuring out a way to share my thoughts without inadvertently making others feel attacked.
I admit that studying this got me more upset yesterday. And it’s made me vow to not be part of the problem.
My next post will be about tea, or ants, or something neutral. Please encourage me to keep growing and making myself less easily provoked.
It’s really been a hard time in the country where I live, and it seems like we are heading more and more to divisiveness and violence. My goal is to do what I can to encourage us all to remember that we are also capable of love and caring, even for people different from ourselves. Let’s spread that, please? Okay, so how am I doing that?
Just a few of the people I enjoy volunteering with and who teach me a lot as I get to really know them.
Raising Funds at a Thrift Shop
Yep, that’s what I did yesterday and what I plan to do every first Saturday of the month for the foreseeable future. The Amazing Grace Thrift Shop in Buckholts has allowed our Milam Touch of Love animal support group to sell items in the front of the shop (they are offering this to other groups, too).
It was fun selling this stuff. And if the peace sign is still unsold, I’m getting it next time!
The kind people behind this really nice store (not kidding, it’s so clean and pretty and the staff is so respectful to all who shop there) are also animal lovers and very supportive of MTOL. And they not only donate the space to us, but have become donors. This is such a wonderful example of putting their Christian beliefs into action.
I love that our volunteer put animal stickers on the baked goods!
Our volunteers brought baked goods and some items to sell, but the shop also let us sell some jewelry and keep the funds. This made our fundraising team very happy! We ended up with well over $400 for the day, from combined sales, donations, and memberships. Plus, we got to talk to a lot of people about the organization, which you just can’t put a price tag on.
Why Do I Do This?
Here’s the thing. I also believe in putting my beliefs into practice. I want to do what I can to do good in the world, encourage peace, and share my convictions that everyone has something to teach me, if I take the time to listen.
It rained a bit today. What a surprise! But that’s nothing.
I went out to feed animals around 6:30. Horses and Fiona were covered with burs, but otherwise fine. To get more exercise, I walked over to the chickens, more wary than usual, since there was yet another hefty rat snake, or in this case, chicken snake, in the henhouse yesterday.
Sure enough, no eggs (but snake is gone). I glanced over at the place next to the cabin, since I’d found four eggs there last week. Yes! An egg!
Medium brown mystery egg.
Hmm. That egg is definitely darker than Rosey’s and Mrs Stripey’s eggs, but lighter than Wild Thing’s speckled ones.
I decided to walk around and see if I could find any other hidden caches. I went in the barn and checked out random baskets an such. Then something caught my eye on a shelf.
I’m happy to announce that my wallet is smaller, but I have successfully registered for the 2019 Texas Master Naturalist Conference! It’s in mid-October in Rockwall, Texas. I hear it’s a nice setting away from Big City stuff. Or it’s in a resort area. We’ll see.
Why do I say I learned a lesson? Well, last year, when I was a newby at the Master Naturalist conference game, I waited a few days after registration opened to go fill out my forms. I quickly learned that most of the sessions I was excited about attending were full already. I wasn’t about to make that mistake again, so at 10 am on the day registration opened (today) I was in there filling out screen after screen of information just so I could get to the session choices.
Here’s our group from last year.
As an aside, I am extra glad my job isn’t Conference Registration Form Maker. The small amount of experience I’ve had with the Cvent software when my team at work uses it makes me gasp. And a conference as complex as one of these is mind boggling. It has pre-sessions and post-sessions. And during the conference, you can take half day, all day, two-hour, or one-hour sessions, but once you register for a half-day session, you don’t want to pay any attention to the others in that time frame or you registration will be coughed back out for you to figure out the problem. I am sure it is quite a programming effort to set all this up.
And then there are the session descriptions! Kudos to the whole team that worked on that. Whew!
It came as a shock to me when my calendar popped up that August 1 is our sleek black weenie dog mix, Vlassic’s “birthday!” Only a year ago, Sara saw something strange on her picnic table and called me over to get my new dog.
A year of me? I’m glad!
We never saw any posts looking for him, which is good, since he crawled immediately into our hearts. He’s my faithful companion who travels back and forth between Austin and Cameron every week with me. He sleeps next to (or on) me every night, and spends a lot of his waking time on my lap.
Luckily he spreads his love to other people’s laps, often unannounced. He has caused many beverages to spill. But when he rolls over and stretches out for a belly rub, you can’t be angry.
Let me demo my belly rub face for you.
He loves his canine friends a lot, too, though he has to occasionally remind them he’s small. His little jaw snaps repeatedly when he’s wrestling with Carlton or Harvey. And when Penney joins in, it’s glorious. We humans just have to smile.
Anita and I are very proud of ourselves. What was a giant mess you couldn’t enter, only a few weeks ago, is now well on its way to becoming a dream wine cellar/shoe closet.
Shoe closet?
Yeah. The Master closet in the Bobcat Lair house turned out way too small, even after I got rid of most of my clothes when I moved here. I put in a shoe rack and other storage stuff, but all I do is fall over things.
Anita unwraps tiny bottles.
My real estate business partner, Carol, suggested I store shoes in the wine room, and suddenly it made sense. I’m always in the office when I leave for work and when I come home, so why not put the shoes there?
This whole unpacking of boxes in the garage and general removing unnecessary stuff from my house thing is not becoming easier for me. However, I am still doing it! Yes! And that’s why I honestly think someone should give me a gold star or something. So, I made myself an award on Bitmoji. I’m very proud of this award.
What keeps me going?
Certainly the lifting of heavy boxes of books and empty CD cases (Lee’s) is not a motivating factor. The heat isn’t helping (though it isn’t bad in the garage). Yeah, having more space in the garage is nice, but the real thrill is…
I went out to feed animals around 6:30. Horses and Fiona were covered with burs, but otherwise fine. To get more exercise, I walked over to the chickens, more wary than usual, since there was yet another hefty rat snake, or in this case, chicken snake, in the henhouse yesterday.
The Hermits' Rest 