Do I also have to have a vision? Argh. I’ve written so many mission and vision statements for institutions and organizations. I’d prefer not to do that again, thanks.
Mission statements have to have bullet points and be active! (From what I vaguely remember.) So:
Suna’s Mission is to:
Respect the Earth, yourself, and others
Be mindful
Maintain healthy boundaries
Be kind
Never stop learning
Today I spent some time learning about using my legs better on my beautiful young horse, Droodles (Drew). That fulfilled my mission of learning, respecting myself, and treating the animals in my care kindly, but with boundaries. And when riding a horse, you need to stay in the moment and be mindful. I guess that mission statement works.
He was ready to GO this afternoon! Good thing, because we got lots of exercise.
Drew’s “Christmas” present arrived so he got to wear his new halter and lead rope today. He’s looking good! Sometimes I still can’t believe I have a chance to be a part of my fantastic horses’ lives.
Much more dignified!
Apache is still a little lame, but getting around okay. I still can’t find where the abscess is, but I’m hoping he’s better soon. Finding that thing is my mission for him! He got a cinnamon colored halter and I hope to try it out tomorrow when I check him out.
Daily Bird
It was extra windy and pretty cold today, but I did my bird watching like a good scientist. The best thing I saw was the first thing, though. I got to enjoy watching the great blue heron chow down on a fish. it usually doesn’t come this close.
Later, after I checked the rain gauge, I saw it catch another one and I guess wrestle it to the ground. It kept poking at it. Maybe it was a crawfish.
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
Today’s question has been on my mind lately since there have been a lot of deaths in my circle, and I’ve been a close observer of the stress, pain, and hard decisions loved ones have to go through.
Just a sweet and fuzzy calf
One of our blog family lost her husband yesterday, which hits hard. But I’m glad she has the support of many close friends who’ve gone through this before, and she has supportive family. Sometimes, when no one you know has been through such a loss, you can feel so alone and lost, and it hits you so hard.
So, do we want to live very long lives? No matter when we pass away, we will leave sad people behind to treasure memories. I wish I had more of them with my mom, who died when I was 26. I coped poorly but was glad she was out of her mental and physical pain.
As long as I’m in reasonable health, can enjoy nature and my community, and am not a burden to others, I’d prefer to live a long life. I’m just curious about how we humans are going to handle things in the coming 30 or 40 years. And I’d love to continue contributing to society and becoming more wise.
Yet, if I were chronically ill with constant pain or costing my family so much that I was a financial burden, I’d have no problems with letting go. It would be interesting to see what’s next for the energy that brings me life.
I can honestly say that I empathize with anyone who decides they are “done” and don’t keep pushing forward in old age, and I can see not wanting to give up. And I have seen for myself how quickly you can go from fighting to dignified surrender when the time comes.
This made no sense, I’m afraid, but it helped me to write it. I do want to live long and prosper, though!
Love to all of you who are struggling. I am here for you if you need me.
I think I already answered a version of this question so I’m going in a different direction with it. Ha ha. Direction. I mean, there’s a sh** ton I could do differently, and I’ve written about that enough.
Instead, let’s take a walk, but differently. Today I turned left rather than right when I left our driveway on my daily nature walk. Whoa.
First, I saw this tiny spider.
I’d been wanting to walk the other way down our road past our property line for a while, because there are some empty fields and mottes of trees where I’ve heard interesting birds while I was busy doing horse control at Sara’s place.
Looks boring, but birds like it.
So, off I went. First I had to enjoy the horses, who were lounging around after playing in the burs (mostly Drew). They’re so cute when they lie down. I do wish they then wouldn’t grind mud into their coats, but they ARE horses.
Horses at peace.
As for birds, I was glad I brought my binoculars, because I got to get a good look at our resident American Kestrel and see it fly with the sun shining through its feathers.
Certainly it isn’t exciting in a photo.
The sun was so bright today that things were hard to see, but I was rewarded by seeing sun dogs in the clouds on either side of it for a while. Perfect cloud placement.
I saw a lot of woodpeckers, vultures, hawks, and caracaras. I also noticed that all the doves I saw were Eurasian Collared Doves, not the Mourning Doves I see at my house right down the road. Binoculars helped with that.
Caracaras in the distance.
I heard both Eastern and Western Meadowlarks, which is cool, but I didn’t see anything new other than a White-breasted Nuthatch. I thought I’d see. One before, but I guess not.
I’m glad I took the walk in this direction, because I got to visit with Sara and look at her permaculture garden progress. Of course, for me the highlight was getting to visit with Jhayati, who is 8 months old now. She’s a beautiful filly and has such a striking face. I sure look forward to watching her grow.
Big Baby Jhayati.
After I saw her, I saw one more mockingbird then no more birds at all. Do they have clocks? They shut up at 11am.
I only have an internal clock.
Luckily there was still something interesting to see. I saw what looked like eggs on the ground where hay bales recently were. It was the eruption of the most cool mushroom we have here, the Lizard’s Claw Stinkhorn Lysurus cruciatus.
Stinkhorn!
Interesting note: I posted photos of this on The Hermits’ Rest Facebook page, which is public, and suddenly weird replies from so-called people trying to promote psychedelic mushrooms popped up, repeatedly. Sigh. Lots to block. This mushroom just stinks. I didn’t see anything about it being psychedelic, but I’m now glad I didn’t lick it.
If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
Love your neighbor. No exceptions.
Suna
That’s my message. Maybe it’s a good one to counter the effects of today being Insurrection Day, the day I realized the country where I live is not going to last much longer.
But live in the moment. And love your neighbor anyway.
Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
This is another trick question. I’m doing my best to stop myself if I start dwelling on the past (except good memories!). And I don’t think it’s healthy to do what I call pre-worrying about what might happen if circumstances go in ways we would like to avoid. That leads people like me to worse anxiety or even ulcers.
This chain got up on the gate thanks to worrying about future dog escapes. The big dogs could climb it.
I think one of the most helpful things I’ve learned from studying Buddhism is the idea of living in the moment. The more I do this, the more content I am in my life and the more joy I can find.
A part of the past I do like to think about is when this cute kitchen was built. We want to preserve it in our renovation. Retro chic.
No one can prevent thinking about the past and future all the time. What I try to do is see what can be learned from past events, and I try to figure out what I can control or affect positively in the future. I learned that from my spouse’s study of Stoicism. It’s made a huge difference for both of us.
Daily Birds
Today was wet and chilly. In the morning there were mostly the usual birds. But it was so quiet that I could hear wing flaps from vultures flying over. Merlin identified three birds that were surprising because we aren’t in their range: Swainson’s thrush, Black-capped chickadee, and Western wood pewee. Maybe the storms brought them over. Or maybe there was a software glitch. The chickadees look really similar but have different calls, so you’d think that would be right. It’s a mystery.
I turned the app on in the late afternoon to see if there were any different birds, and sure enough, there were two ducks, the common mallard and blue-winged teal. I’m hearing lots more ducks and geese this year!
The gift I want most in the world would be to repair my relationship with my older son and come to some kind of mutual acceptance of each other, just as we are. Understanding of perceived mistakes or failings on each of our parts is something we could do. I’d be willing to try. Anyone willing to help bring us back together would receive my eternal gratitude.
Foggy morning leads to melancholic musings
Well, that’s not something I foresee happening after five years. So I’ll add that the greatest gifts I do receive are friendship and acceptance. I think we all would like to feel accepted and like we fit in. I treasure my community of kind and open hearted friends who accept each other, warts and all.
Foggy bovine
Online friends count, too. So many of us would feel very isolated if it weren’t for our friends who are connected on social media, on video chats, and in blogs. Social media is NOT all bad.
Daily Bird
Well, there weren’t many birds out today, because it was so foggy and cold.
Chilly birds.
The highlight today was the reappearance of one of my favorites, the barred owl. I’ve read that barred owls and great horned owls don’t like to live together, so I was happy to hear one this morning. Hooray!
Well, that’s a question with a lot of assumptions behind it. Who says all bloggers go to college? I’d have preferred something like, “Where did you get your education?” (From where?) I realize there are people would give flippant answers, like “the school of hard knocks,” but you’d also get interesting insights into folks with non-traditional paths.
Mother Nature is also a great teacher.
I was VERY traditional. After four years of attending a large high school in suburban Ft Lauderdale, Florida (unfortunately named Plantation High School), I spent four years at a large state university. The years at the University of Florida had a lot of good parts. I learned a lot, screwed up my personal life irreparably, and thoroughly enjoyed living in my home town again. My studies focused on linguistics, Japanese, and cinema studies (my boyfriend’s major). I’m extremely grateful to the National Merit Scholarship system, which allowed me to attend college even though my family was not well off and my mother had many medical bills.
See the bright spot under the sun? That’s the bit of flooding we got last night. It was a good rain.
I then went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for graduate school. Fun fact: both the schools I attended have orange and blue as their school colors. At least gators add green to the mix. UI are the Fighting Illini, which I was shocked to discover pronounced the last two vowels like “eye,” not “ee.”
There I studied pragmatics, syntax, and semantics. I learned to write well and to teach adults. I loved teaching. Academic writing, not so much. My topic got really boring, which is why I’m not a professor right now.
My favorite thing on campus was the beautiful statue of Alma Mater welcoming students and graduates, by Lorado Taft. It was always a happy sight.
Image in Public Domain
If you’re still awake, I can give you my highlights of the day. First, I finished my giant three-part 2023 temperature blanket.
Part 3, on a chair.
The last square is a handy key to the colors. I included the white, silver and purple that would have indicated 0° to 25° even though it never got that cold. Maybe this year! Or not! I could do without the Polar Vortex they keep threatening us with.
Far left is 105-109, far right is 0-4.
I’ll write up an official summary once I figure out how to get a photo of the whole thing.
Daily Birds
Second, two birds made me happy today. One was the first bird Merlin heard, a yellow-bellied sapsucker. I think I’ve now recorded all the woodpeckers that live here.
When I lived in Illinois, we had a sweet gum tree in our back yard. Every year one of these little guys would come and drill a new row of holes in that tree. It was so much fun to watch it working away, and the holes were a wonderful remembrance.
The other bird that brought joy today has already been the Daily Bird, but I was excited to actually see the great horned owl today. Yes, that blob in the photograph was hooting.
I also enjoyed my sparrow buddies a lot. The Harris’s sparrows were singing and playing this afternoon. I hadn’t heard them in a few days. They fed in the trees next to me for a while, so I got good views, though obscured by branches. Here are some photos of them, the other sparrows, and cardinals in the brush and trees. Yes, it’s a brown world right now, but I like brown.
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
I’ll answer this: yes, often. We all should play.
I hang out with birds and plants every day, just for fun, and nominally for research. I’m not doing it for seeing the mist or the rarest birds. I just want to understand what lives where I do.
Loggerhead shrike looking at me.
I mess around with horses. It’s because I love them. They are fun to play with even when things don’t quite work out. Like today, when it rained throughout my lesson, and Drew was not feeling good for some reason. But it worked out and we learned that he pays attention to me! I’m not in it to be the best, but to enjoy improving my skills and keeping my horses happy and healthy.
The storm clouds heading my way.
I craft, mostly knitting and crocheting. It used to be serious for me. I wanted to be known for my skill. Now I make things to enjoy or to experiment. I don’t care if anyone copies my patterns, if I’m making the trendy thing in the trendy yarn, or if I churn out 20 sweaters a year. I just have fun playing with yarn.
Next-to-last square on the 2023 temperature blanket. This one is the highest high and lowest low.
I hike! I walk! I hang out with friends! I blog! I play! It’s all for fun.
Because it’s fun.
I hope you’re having fun in this, the only life you’re going to have this time around.
The WordPress folks have a new set of prompts for this month, so I’ll try to answer them, for fun. The first one was about challenges. Oh what fun. I don’t have all night to spend on this topic!
Neither do I
What’s not a challenge is making New Year’s dinner. My black-eyed peas, collard greens, and cornbread came out delicious, for the four of us who could make it. We made plates to take to Lee’s brother and Anita, who came down with the flu, and have plenty of leftovers. Success!
On to the challenges
So, my main challenge these days is a lack of self confidence, I think. I always think I can’t do new things, so I put them off or avoid things. Learning horsemanship has helped me a lot with this. I’m making myself try new things and I’m often succeeding or making a good try. I think this new bravery is manifesting in other areas, which is really great.
One I’m not doing as well with these days is expressing myself without offending people I care about or causing problems. So I’ve been much quieter for the past year or so than I used to be. These days it’s probably safer to keep some kinds of opinions to yourself but I do want to advocate for myself at work and in other personal areas.
Got any funny challenges?
I’m also tired of being vertically challenged. I wish I could reach things without stools and mount a horse from the ground. There, a less serious one.
A final challenge is figuring out when or if I can retire from full time work. There are too many factors for me to figure out right now. More on that in the coming months.
That’s enough of that list.
It was cold and windy, so there weren’t many birds. However, there was a brief moment of sun that encouraged the white-throated sparrows to launch into a concert. Their song is hauntingly beautiful. It has three or four slight variations, like a fugue. What a greeting for 2024!
The Hermits' Rest 