dailyprompt – The Hermits' Rest

Mountain Girl Wannabe

Beach or mountains? Which do you prefer? Why?

I grew up near beaches and I like them okay, though I prefer marshy land near beaches, which have more interesting birds.

Beach sunsets are pretty fine! I do love Hilton Head.

But I really love mountains and always have. I looked forward to visiting Chattanooga, where my paternal grandmother lived, each summer so we could look at streams, go through tunnels, and drive along the Blue Ridge Mountains.

As an adult, I’ve treasured my visits to other mountains in all weather. There are really good birds, too, and each area is so different! if I were rich, I’d head right over to Breckenridge and hike and snowshoe and be just fine. Or maybe Ruidoso, since it’s in another state I love.

Just dreaming. I’m here in Texas looking at a small hill. At least I have all these birds!

Look. I finally took bird photos you can identify as birds. Eastern Phoebe.

Off topic, but I enjoyed watching a huge flock of Brown-headed Cowbirds roosting and then departing en masse this morning. I had the good camera (Cameron EOSR5 Mark II) and telephoto lens in the birding area. Distance shots are from the phone camera.

I also dragged the camera to the Wild Wings Bird Sanctuary to practice close-ups. I got lots of chickadees and titmice at the feeders and a few others. I think a couple are pretty good. At least you can see details on them. I’m gonna practice this week so my camera muscles will be all strong for next weekend. Anyway, here are cute titmice.

And here are just a few Carolina Chickadees. They pose well.

I also got a couple of nice shots of water dripping into the birdbath. Look carefully and you will see many honeybees from the nearby hives.

I took lots of photos of new Wildscape plants, but that will be in a Master Naturalist blog. But here are a couple of insects!

So, whee. Mountains are great, but no matter where you are, there are birds, insects, and plants to explore.

My Favorite Place in Cameron

What is your favorite place to go in your city?

Okay, it’s not a city; it’s a small town. And I no longer go into town very often. I’m avoiding humanity. Plus many of my favorite places are no longer there, sigh (probably because I stopped going anywhere optional).

But there are still a few places I like in Cameron, Texas, so I must choose one. It isn’t very hard, basically because I truly love pecan sticky buns. The only place you can get them is at the local bakery!

See, I even have a dusty sticker in my office.

Shirley Mae’s has a cute playroom my son built, many upgrades done by Chris, and it’s where Anita and I used to get coffee and snacks together before she stopped taking any time off work. Lots of good memories there, and the owners are also great.

Where the sticky buns live (photo from their Facebook page)

I really could have used a baked item this morning, since I drove all the way to the courthouse for jury duty, only to have it canceled right as I arrived. I’d called the jury duty line before I left, and it did say I had to show up. So, 99 people and I drove from around the county just to be good citizens.

It’s typical for all the cases to settle before trial here. It costs a lot to do jury trials, so they try to plea bargain everything. I get it. And apparently this kind of thing happens often in other places, too. So, I just wish the bakery was open on Mondays for sad potential jurors.

On another note

I’d say all is well that ends well, but I have to admit I feel mentally unbalanced. Last night I started having severe anxiety symptoms, the chest pains that you hope aren’t really a heart attack. (Watch said my pulse was fine.) Then last night, I had a horrible nightmare that had me screaming for my mom and woke Lee up.

I wonder what’s bothering me? Not this wheel bug!

Today I have continued to feel anxious and pained in my chest. Of course I have no more Xanax, because I haven’t felt really bad since this time last year. What’s weird is I haven’t felt no frightening new/old President to concern me. Things are fine as far as I can tell.

I hope I figure this out!

And don’t worry; I’ve dealt with anxiety my whole life, just less in the past few years. I can handle it with all that breathing and meditation and stuff.

My Weird Relationship with Screens

How do you manage screen time for yourself?

Look, I’ve been earning my pay looking at computer screens, well, since they were invented (though I did work as a copy editor and proofreader using pencil and paper for a while). And I was an early handheld device adopter—playing Bejeweled on my Palm Pilot was a great stress reliever during my divorce.

Red pencils. Proofreader tools. Photo from Pexels.

This is to say, I have a good bit of screen experience (of course I have had television since Lassie was on every Sunday). I can’t avoid computer screens as long as I have paid employment in my field of tech writing, but I can try to limit phone use. Hey! I could stop blogging on my phone! Yes! No. It’s fun.

I used one of these babies. Monochrome display! Photo from Pexels.

You’d think my nature hobbies would help me escape screens, but the phone comes with me to take all my photos. But, hooray for me, since I’ve taken to leaving my phone outside listening to birds on Merlin Bird ID, I can’t doom scroll for many hours. Weird but it works. Of course, the phone thinks I’m looking at is and racks up time that makes me look glued to the phone, but I’m not!

And of course I read a lot and do all those crafts. So I’m okay with my screen time. Oh, and I make sure not to open up my Finch self-care app more than 2-3 times a day. One can get sucked in.

Apparently I **have** used Finch every day since I got it, though.

My point? I don’t think looking at screens is a terrible problem for me. If I’m learning, earning money, interacting with friends, or seeing the beauty in the world, screens do me good. My area of caution is to not read or watch content designed to upset me or insult me. I read one or two posts a day from my incendiary friends (both left and right), then I just move on as soon as I see where content is headed.

That’s it. I just stop. Over generalizing about groups or factions? I keep moving. Mean? Skip. Blatantly wrong but not open to other viewpoints? No response. It works. Now I mostly see trees, horses, chickens, yarn, jokes, and for some reason makeup for “mature” skin (which I don’t wear). Just don’t engage unless you think you can accomplish something.

Enough of that. I would have shared how nice the spot we are staying in at Blanco State Park is, but by the time we figured out the latest issue with Seneca the motorhome and I finished working, it was dark. Ugh. The chassis battery is dead. We could recharge it by starting the generator, but that hasn’t worked for months. Have I mentioned that recreational vehicles are prone to breaking? Yes. It’s true.

So yay, we are camping with no air conditioning! So primitive! And no TV! (too dark to set up the system). No, we are just fine, other than the occasional acorn dropping on the roof.

Yeah, Genie, Do This

You have three magic genie wishes, what are you asking for?

Everyone will wake up one day and realize we can all live together in peace if we spend as much energy trying to work things out as we now do on trying to divide each other.
Everyone has what they need to be healthy, contribute to society, and love who they love.
The non-human life in earth can thrive and heal the planet.

That will do.

It’s not hopeless. Lilies came back after the rain. Just south of here, migrating monarchs are everywhere. Sandhill Cranes are reaching their wintering grounds. A cold front is coming.

Happy to Stay Right Here

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

Nah. I have no need to go to the moon. I like it where it is and me where I am. All the lunar romance, metaphor, and legend falls away when you view the moon as a large cratered hunk of rock. I do think it’s amazing that our moon is the exact right size to create eclipses, though. That is one thing that makes me wonder if there’s an intelligent designer of the universe. Maybe the only thing…

…meanwhile, back in my little spot on Gaia, Mother Nature has taken on a benevolent aspect, at least for a time, and graced us with rain not just one, but two nights in a row! Yesterday’s total was over two inches, and tonight it’s rained hard for quite a while. There was a little water in the creek today. I look forward to seeing how our tanks look tomorrow.

But during the day, it was pleasant, which enabled me to get my eyes examined right in Cameron, Texas (what a luxury), which included interesting conversations on current events where I just listened. I rewarded myself with a visit to the bakery for a nice sticky bun. Mmm.

No photo of a bun, but here’s a Great Egret in a tree.

I’d thought my next task, getting Apache ready for a lesson, would be quick and easy. I was mistaken. I now have all dark gray horses, the exact color of our dirt. Apache had really been getting into his mud spa treatment and was concentrating particularly on his mane. He was encrusted. I regret not photographing it, but was pressed for time.

He looked like me, only bigger and more horse shaped.

I did my best in the limited time I had to wash him off, but it was not successful. At least he was clean enough to put a saddle on and did well even with the distractions of gunshots and frolicking foals. He’s sure come a long way.

I’m sure he will enjoy the mud these clouds have created.

That’s about all I have to write about today, because rather than contemplating wasting my money going to visit a cratered rock, I spent the rest of the day contemplating the value of life, the importance of friendship, and how we need to enjoy every moment we have on this planet, even when things are more than a little wonky.

I enjoyed the moment I saw this Nuptial Scorpionfly today!

Please know that if you’re my friend, you matter to me very much. And even if I don’t know you, I wish you a good life.

Working on Things?

What have you been working on?

I’ve been slacking on my main project, the temperature blanket. I just have to buckle down and sew September onto the main blanket and crochet more black squares. Then I can enjoy October (hoping it cools off someday).

Poorly arranged photo of September. Hot colors.

This doesn’t mean work isn’t being done around the Hermits’ Rest. I was delighted to notice a lot of materials in our back yard when I arrived home from College Station. I also noticed the horses had more hay, so someone or someones had been busy this weekend!

Yes! My concrete bird-watching pad is becoming a birding station. It’s going to be quite a little gem. Kathleen has been painting trim like she’s driven, and her brother and spouse are building the structure.

I’ll have the shade I need in summer and protection from wind in winter. I look forward to trying it out!

I was pretty darned tired today from all that activity at the Texas Master Naturalist annual meeting. So I mostly napped and tried to add more photos before the Texas Pollinator Week ends. I did find a few interesting things, including katydids that I learned about this week.

It’s good to be home and back working on my usual projects, iNaturalist, Merlin Bird ID (got a Great Horned Owl!), crochet, and feeding animals. I fed horses and did not get injured. They’re calmer with their different bale of hay. That’s good, because half my face is green from bruising fun.

You Know I’m an Introvert, Right?

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m 100% an introvert. Well socialized, they tell me. I mention it often, as my links in this paragraph show, but it still surprises folks. Being an introvert (and hermit) always gets put to a test when I go to do things in large groups. I need my recovery time.

Yesterday was the first full day of the 2025 Texas Master Naturalist Annual Meeting, so I was around people from 7am to 10pm. This should explain why there wasn’t a blog entry! By the time I got back to the sad hotel, I just wanted to collapse.

I did see some nature. This cloudless Sulphur stood still!

Today is the second day, and I’m skipping a session to hide in a corner and write. Perfect for regaining energy.

Still, yesterday was a lot of fun. The highlight, for sure, was a visit to the SM Tracy Herbarium and the other collections in the huge former warehouse it shares. I’d been there before, but it’s so fascinating, and this time we were shown each collection by one of the people who work there.

This is a freezer to kill bugs on specimens.

The fish specialist pretending to be the herp specialist was my favorite, because he showed us his new gulper eel specimen and a video on these fascinating fish. The gulper eel is now my favorite. It will be yours, too, if you watch the video.

I made a new friend and we carpooled both here and to an afternoon session on old growth forests, where it was hot, but I learned about how to measure a tree (at 4.5’ and with a special diameter tape that I now want).

When we got back I talked a lot to vendors and bought a replacement for my missing binoculars, plus enjoyed a second viewing of my friend Mike M’s presentation on “eco-grief.”

Still thinking about what metal art to buy

It’s been fun hanging out with old friends and meeting new ones. The dinner presentation was a sweet tribute to where volunteering can take you, then we tested out the new bar in the convention center. It has a great view. I only had ginger ale and bitters, since I had to drive to the hotel, but conversation was good!

Dinner speakers, including good ole Sam K. He’s a great ambassador for us.

Hard Goals

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

As tired as I am, I can answer this one (I don’t answer blog prompts lately because I’ve answered most of them). That’s good, because it was another day of barely getting through work and not being able to do much more.

I finished coloring this. It took a week or so in small doses.

So, I’ve probably mentioned this before and will again. But for years I had a hard time being the person I felt I could be, and it turns out I had a lot to do with it. Thanks to some issues in my birth family and an inherently sensitive nature, I was always very hard on myself.

I never met my own expectations. Any mistake I made lingered in my mind for a long time. I’d replay “dumb” things I said over and over. And I would constantly talk to myself in ways no one would talk to someone they cared about. I was ugly, fat, stupid, and so on. I was not nice to me.

Since I AM actually pretty smart and intuitive, I figured out that I was not helping myself with the negative self talk. So I had some therapy, talked things out with a group of safe and understanding women, meditated (a lot, still do), and read.

I’m very pleased to have come across the writing of Brené Brown. I’m also pleased someone made me read a self-help book. I find most of them really simplistic or not right for me. Her first few books opened my eyes to how much I was affecting my own self worth, and by that, encouraging others to pick at me or devalue me. Figuring out that I wasn’t the only one doing this to myself was a huge revelation. I got a much better outlook and began to heal.

I got tested a lot in this healing phase. Since I came to Cameron, a couple of people (who of course are suffering from their own internal battles) tried their best to break me down, give the community a bad impression of me, and hurt others I cared about. I’ve had some very hard times here in rural Texas, where even in a good day I’m a square peg not even trying to fit into a round hole.

But, one day, right after a very mean person was mean to me, something snapped in my brain. I told my patterns I was sick and tired of them and vowed to reframe the situation every time I started to berate myself.

Get this. It worked. After a while, weird thoughts like how good I felt, or how peaceful life was began to replace sadness. My negativity patterns have gone into background mode, and I feel so much better. Sure, that stuff is still down there and today’s trying times make feeling good about anything difficult. Yet, I honestly feel good about myself, like myself, and don’t beat myself up when I screw up (much). And of course, the horse riding lessons helped me practice gaining self confidence.

I kept telling myself I was fine just as I was and that it’s perfectly okay that not everybody likes me until it became true. I’ve even learned a bit about how to perform the once-mysterious act of “letting other people’s negativity slide right off my back.”

Maybe that’s why these bluebirds of happiness keep following me.

I try to cut others some slack, and accept those around me who confuse me just as they are. I just hope they find peace and joy on their path.

Who IS THIS version of Suna? She’s different. Not perfect, not better than anyone else, but at a good place in her spiritual journey.

So, blog prompt readers, loving myself and treating myself kindly were my hardest goals.

Now I’ll move on towards being less judgmental (making good progress), and being so afraid to speak up about what I see as wrong. There’s always room for improvement!

Don’t Call Me Sue

Where did your name come from?

Since today was just fine (not too hot!) and I don’t want to come across too perky like I did yesterday, I’ll just answer this here question.

My name is *Rhynchomitra recurva –* I’m a leafhopper.

My name is Sue Ann. This is nothing new to evil internet scum. The internet has known my name since 1989, back in Usenet days.

Two-word given names are common in the southern USA, from where I and my ancestors of many generations hailed. Most of my dad’s sisters had them, Bettye Sue and Doris Ann were two of them. It appears that my parents were expecting a boy when I emerged from Mom’s twilight sleep. But there I was, including all my curly hair. They were going to name a boy Edwin (my father’s first name that he only used on official business) but they must have rejected Edwina (a name of a very funny older woman I once knew). I’m glad they saved it for my brother (Lee also had a brother named Edwin).

Look, corn. Someone lost their harvest. Nothing to do with names, except to say, “We call it maize.”

Anyway, I’m glad they eventually named me after the above-mentioned two of Dad’s sisters. Again, I’m relieved not to be Bettye Doris. Most of my life I liked my name other than a brief time I wanted to be Susanna. What I don’t like is the name Sue by itself. It’s fine for my friends named Sue (popular name of my generation), but I don’t like it for me. I don’t respond to it, and if someone calls me that, they go down a notch in my estimation. It’s like calling someone who goes by Will, Bill. So, if you ever meet me or send me a message, remember my two-word name.

Sue Ann means graceful lily according to name origins. So not me. I’m more sturdy, like this snow on the prairie plant.

You are always welcome to call me my alternate name, Suna, which I’ve had over half my life. Long story there.

No doubt I’ve told this particular story before, but I’m not up to scouring the archives to see. You can do it, of course. Feel free!

Alternative: look at the pretty morning sky.

Off I go, now, to come up with better topics and hope for rains.

Everything Is Connected

Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.

Fine. I found an article on the worst cars of the early 1970s, the Ford Pinto, Chevrolet Vega, and AMC Gremlin. These are three small cars introduced to fight the tiny Japanese imports from Toyota, Datsun (future Nissan), Honda, etc.

How does this article about bad cars of yore connect to my life? Remember now, I’m old. My first car was a 1972 Ford Pinto wagon. It was light blue with fake wood paneling. It was originally purchased for my mother, but the second I got my license, it was passed on to me to drive my brother and myself to school activities. Mom hated driving on “big roads.” My high school friends and I enjoyed blasting the little radio and cruising by the homes of cute boys.

This poor car could only hit 70 mph going downhill and had a radiator too small for its engine. But it carted me, my boyfriend (one of the cute high school boys) and our roommates back and forth through college.

It went forward and held 4-ish people. This was the car of my other male high school best friend.

The actual Pinto coupe shown above was smaller than the wagon. It was great for me, Anita, and the two guys, but add a fifth person and someone had to sit on the dreaded hump in the minuscule back seat. Of course, hormonal teens enjoyed the forced closeness. Good times.

My second car magically appeared one day in the summer between my junior and senior years of college, after too many Pinto issues. I had high hopes for an upgrade. Nope. 1974 AMC Gremlin. Black, black interior, aftermarket air conditioner. Just perfect for a summer commute in South Florida. Sarcasm there.

Speaking of heat and humidity, these Lark Sparrows are here to say today’s humidity was awful.

But the Gremlin got me through three years or more of grad school in Illinois until it got us (me and same boyfriend) home from Florida in a blizzard and never moved again. Thus ended my time with two of the three worst cars of the 70s.

By the way, my friend Lynn’s dad had a Vega, so I got to experience it as well. Those cars rusted through amazingly quickly near the ocean.

[car photos from Motor Trend in 2001]

Mission accomplished. I related the article to my life. It was nice to think back on fun teen memories. A dear friend from that time is very ill right now, and thinking of good times when we rode in our little cars is a balm to my heart.

Tarot card of the day was The Teacher again. I drew it just before an educational talk by my horse teacher.