If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?
Easiest blog prompt EVER. I do so wish this word would stop popping out of my mouth:
SORRY
Whenever I feel stressed, judged, criticized, or trapped in a situation I want to get away from, I start apologizing. If there were a word cloud of my vocabulary, “sorry” would be one of the giant words (along with family and pet names.
I’ve managed to get past many parts of my childhood anxiety, sensitivity, rejection sensitivity. My inner voice is kinder. I judge others less harshly. I no longer dwell on my past and criticize myself for past mistakes.
But I can’t stop apologizing for stuff I don’t even have control over. It sure annoys my family and good friends. Sorry about that.
Well, I had to tell our beautiful Easter Egger hen, Betsy, that I was sorry I’d been putting her down for so long. I was telling everyone what a useless hen she was, because she hadn’t laid an egg yet, and I’d had her a long time. I mean, even little Billie Idyl was finally laying.
How dare you doubt me? And look, I have pale ears, which means pale eggs!
But today when I went to look for eggs, she was in the box, sitting like she was going to lay! And she kept making those noises hens make when they’re working on an egg. I was all excited that finally I’d get a beautiful green egg. Nearly all of these hybrid chickens lay eggs of some interesting color or another.
I also have a fluffy butt.
An hour or two later, I checked back in and found a gorgeous blue egg…which I knew was from Blanca, the Whiting True Blue hen. And there beside it, was this little darling.
It’s darker than ivory, but lighter than tan.
That is a light brown egg. In fact, I’d gotten a light brown egg every day for the past three days, thinking it was one of Billie Idyll’s that was just a little darker than usual. Betsy HAD finally started to produce, along with the rest of the newer chickens, who think it’s now spring.
The new ones are on the right.
I’m sorry, Betsy. Now all four of last year’s hens have laid eggs, and good ole Star is also laying. They are going to be all surprised when it gets cold this weekend. But I’m happy to be getting enough eggs again that I can share them with Lee’s brother, who loves eggs almost as much as I do.
In other news, we still have interesting bugs, not only a wheel bug (I love those), but also one of these guys, a painted hickory borer (or a mesquite borer, but it matches the hickory one better on iNaturalist).
Wheel bugPainted hickory borer
And in just a bit of horse news, Sara and I are feeling good about our horses. She and Aragorn came over today, and he was so calm and centered! He has made a lot of progress in his ability to come here to visit. He even trotted calmly and collected. What a guy. And Apache did extremely well today in the round pen. Sara was impressed and just smiled so much at me. I felt good. He’s still not good outside the pen, but he was doing his stopping and backing so well. I just wanted to acknowledge that improvement.
No horse photos today, but here’s where I wish I could ride.
Our animals are such a source of joy, and we really need it right now. Everyone seems to be getting sick, no matter how hard they try to stay safe. Traveling friends are faring the worst, and it makes me so concerned. The flu is also going around here now. Great. But all my family and friends who are struggling are finding support from their communities. I’ve had some good reminders of that lately and am very grateful.
Like I said yesterday, I crashed hard and pretty much wasn’t good for anything yesterday afternoon. That became patently obvious as the day dragged on. Mistakes were made. Errors occurred. At least I managed to leave work, put the right kind of gas in my car, find my hair salon and get my hair cut safely (I like how much care they take there).
In good stuff, I got a nice postcard from a random person in Illinois asking me to vote. I am impressed by how many people have done volunteer work this year that’s not totally annoying.
But I’m not firing on all cylinders still, thanks to a combination of really intense work, coronavirus rates going back up, and US politics worries. Heh, I typed that and my stomach did a pang. My stress goes there.
What I Did
There was a board meeting for Master Naturalists last night, which I set up, myself. I’d made the agenda and sent it out. When I made it, I saw that there were instructions up there to do the meeting as a phone call. “Ah,” I thought, “I don’t have to do another Zoom meeting.” Later in the day I told someone how it would be easy to find the meeting, just dial the phone.
The meeting started, and half the board wasn’t there. Hmm. Then a half hour later, we got lots of requests for why the Zoom meeting hadn’t started. Well, it’s a PHONE meeting, said those of us who read the agenda.
Yep. It happens. Image from @clairegran via Twenty20.
The joke was on ME. I had actually set up a Zoom meeting at 6:30 AND a phone call at 6. I was so zonked when I set up the agenda, I couldn’t remember what I did when I set up the meeting. I’d left a whole bunch of people stranded. Perhaps my term as President will be a single term – I hear it’s popular.
UGH. We got everyone on the phone eventually, and I got to apologize many, many times, as each person felt compelled to inform us that they were waiting and waiting, and were SURE they’d done the right thing. They had. Everyone had done the right thing, depending on which set of my instructions they followed. While the agenda had phone instructions, they weren’t in bold or screaming to ignore the previous instructions, because I’d forgotten.
In the end everyone laughed. Or at least most people laughed. There are a lot of very serious Master Naturalists, and that is fine. I just know I look like a real doofus to them. But, hey, I’ve learned a lesson, which is what I am told I should do after messing up.
It Continues
Well, I DID need to update the watch OS. In Cameron I never have the Wi-Fi to do it.
Sigh. It turns out I actually declined my boss’s meeting request for today. That could explain why it wasn’t on my calendar. I kept wondering where that meeting went. I’m great at clicking the wrong thing on the phone!
Plus, I had this goal of getting back to Cameron at 10 so I could work from there the rest of the day. Nope, my watch insists on updating right this minute. It gave me time to blog, I guess.
Thank you all for reading this. Acknowledge your own humanity today by admitting that you screwed up, apologizing, and moving on. If you haven’t screwed up, don’t worry; you will. Stories of COVID-brain inspired mess-ups are welcome.
The Hermits' Rest 