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!
Once again, Goldie the Mighty Huntress has tangled with her striped nemesis, one of our local skunks.
I made the smelly part of the couch smellier
It happened last night, which we figured out when we tried to stop Penney from blocking Goldie from coming upstairs. We then praised Penney!
This morning Vlassic investigated where the skunk was. He heard something and turned tail to run. He’s experienced skunks.
At least this time she didn’t kill and try to eat it, which last time resulted in months of skunk breath and a disgusting mess for me to remove. No, this was just a light spray.
Light as a butterfly.
Of course a light spray leads to a stinky house nonetheless. My office, where she sleeps, is the worse. Good thing I don’t work until Tuesday!
Bonus painted lady.
It’s already better after I’ve used Febreeze and Lysol. No, friends, tomato juice doesn’t work. We put dog-safe stuff on Goldie, too. I forget what it is.
Caracara, hawk, and moon.
Our dinner guests tomorrow will just have to deal with it.
Everything else is fine. I did all my normal stuff, like nail polish and schooling Drew. Apache was seen trotting, but not easily. More epsom salts for him.
New Year’s nails
By the way I’ve appreciated comments after yesterday’s post. Thanks!
In bird news, I watched a great egret catch two fish and did not appreciate seeing a hawk over by the horses near my chickens. I think something was after Billie Idyll yesterday. Hope for the best.
Huh? Well. I just noticed that all my blog hits today come from the year we went to an old but comfy condo in Bandera where I enjoyed many deer, cats, and vultures. There, I discussed participating in the invented holiday Nestivus, which is just for introverts who need to recharge from holiday activities.
Penney and I hid in the woods a while.
This entire Christmas season I’m engaging in Nestivus, which requires one to retreat to your refuge and veg, zone out, and nest in comfy clothing, with your furry friends. It’s a great idea, and I’m grateful to the blogger who invented it in 2019. Ah, back when people had fun I. Groups and needed to retreat.
Harvey was happy to Nestivus with Lee when we came home.
I guess someone linked to my old post, which is nice!
Anyway, maybe next year will find me more enthusiastic about decorations, presents, and all those modern Christmas things. Currently I’m advocating for peace on earth and good will to all.
I wish you all the chance to find small things of beauty around you. Isn’t this Texas nightshade berry bright?
It rained a lot at Canyon Lake and the Hermits’ Rest overnight. We came home to the usual results of over two inches of rain: a flooded creek.
Usually you see no water from here
I enjoyed listening to birds, checking out the creek and trying to feed filthy horses when we got home. All horses had rolled in mud and burs. Great. But the rain is appreciated and enough of a seasonal gift for me.
Now you know why they call it a flood plain. At least twice a year this pasture floods. That’s as far as it will come up. Across the road, also wet. Our house and the neighbors’ house are on hills, which is smart. Happy lichen.
Enjoy your Nestivus celebration, when you get the chance to have it, and in the meantime, enjoy family and celebration if that’s happening for you.
I say I’m a hippie, because when I saw the prompt for the day, two things popped into my head: blue jeans and t-shirts. I have had that as my uniform since the day I was allowed to wear pants to school, which I think was in 1971. It sure saved Mom money, so she didn’t argue with me. My clothing budget shrank a lot. And I bought my own shirts.
My avatar wears my usual stuff. Jeans, t-shirt, jean jacket and cowboy boots.
The t-shirts have only changed in that now there are more horses on them and before I had stylized drag racing cars. Peace symbols and flowers have stayed.
The jeans started out straight, became bell-bottoms, got high-waisted and low-waisted and repeated in various ways. Mostly I wore basic Levi’s.
I didn’t catch it, but I did see this goatweed leafwing butterfly today.
Now, on to the day off. I felt so good after a very long night of sleep, that I decided to take it easy today. I spent a lot of time birding, including being startled by the blue heron twice. It’s been picking off fish in the dwindling overflow pond, and neither of us can see the other until we’re on top of each other.
Location of heron.
The other encounter I had came when Carlton and I took a walk in the woods. Suddenly he froze. I think he was trying to point like a hunting dog. We’d come upon an opossum along the stream bed. he must have smelled it, since he doesn’t see well.
Look over there!
Carlton was a good boy and followed me so the animal could go on about its business. It was a good walk the rest of the way. I’m glad I didn’t bring the Mighty Huntress Goldie or we’d have had another bloodbath. Ugh.
Just hanging out
Other than enjoying birds, I enjoyed the horses. This morning I caught them at playtime, which involved Drew and Dusty nuzzling then running down the pasture to the pens, rearing and pawing, then running back. Dusty still has it in him! (Pictures are blurry because I was far away.)
Playing Dusty is ahead Drew passes himDrew turned around Going back Turned again.
Mabel eventually got into the running, but not the rest of it. I’ve noticed that she’s now strong enough to chase off any horse who tries to nip her.
Horse conference
Eventually Apache thundered back and forth until they all gathered around the hay bale. It’s nice to watch them play, and I’m glad they have the space to do so.
See, he doesn’t spend ALL his time staring into space.
Later I spent quality time with everyone, which is always so nice. Drew is a little pissy lately, since his head injury. But the other horses and Fiona were fine. I got all the burs off Mabel, even. I just have to wait until it’s her idea to have a petting session.
No burs!
I had plenty of time to make dinner, and was so relaxed I didn’t even get upset when Dish Network didn’t have the channel where Sunday Night Football was. Lee just went over and set up the antenna he’d bought weeks ago for just such an eventuality. Boom. TV. It comes in great, actually.
I made a potholder or hot pad. It’s very thick, because I crocheted it with thermal stitch.
And yes, I wore jeans and a t-shirt today.
Closeup of stitch
Daily Bird
I’m featuring the orange-crowned warbler today, because I’d never heard one here before, just on one camping trip. I didn’t see it, but I can sure ID one by sound now. It sounded like one of those rhythm instruments you scrape across in Latin music, usually five sets of scrapy sounds.
They only drop by here while migrating, according to the map.
A bird I saw a lot today was the Savannah sparrow. It’s a basic brown sparrow, but it’s everywhere this time of year. It and the pipit make little peeps.
Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
If they are referring to the winter holidays, like the Solstice or Christmas, then there’s only been one constant since my children were little, and that’s to have cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We used to eat them while opening gifts.
Something cheerful: Vlassic running at sunset.
For many, many reasons I’m not doing much for Christmas this year. It’s going to be a hard one for much of my family, and I’m not feeling very celebratory. I’m just going to go somewhere with Lee, if we can get someone to feed dogs and medicate Apache.
Speaking of horses, I caught Drew and Fiona being friendly today.
If not, I’ll stay home and eat cinnamon rolls then cook a meal for the same people I cooked Thanksgiving for. Maybe I’ll make pork loin and correct cranberry sauce. I think there will be small, handmade gifts for people.
You know, I think I just don’t want to do anything religious. I’m not happy with things being done in the name of religion these days, especially the ones stemming from Moses and his tribes. I’m disappointed in wars, book banning, misogyny, religious intolerance, and fundamentalism. All of it.
For the solstice, which at least predates Christmas, there will be candles and maybe a fire if the place we go has a fireplace. I’ll make decorations out of things from the woods and put intentions of peace into them.
Or we can watch a sunset.
It will be fine to skip materialism and shiny things for one year and concentrate on helping struggling loved ones however I can.
Daily Bird
We had some rain today, but it only rained hard briefly. It did quiet the birds down. The daily birds just have to be the European starlings.
As I went out to slog through the puddles to feed the horses, I heard sounds like tiny bells. It was a huge flock of starlings heading off to some field now that the sun was back out. It always amazes me how many there are.
I learned in a magazine that the flocks often contain the local grackles as well. Blackbirds like each other, I guess. I’m never going to love grackles, those resourceful parking lot scroungers with the incredibly annoying whistles, the great-tailed grackles. I’ll work on it.
Actually, no one asked this except the daily prompt writer, because everyone who knows me more than as a glancing acquaintance can tell you my favorite animal is the horse, followed closely by and endless parade of dogs.
Mabel laughs at the absurdity of anyone wondering what my favorite animal is.
I’ve loved horses since before I knew exactly what a horse was. My mother wasn’t clear on the concept either, and taught baby Suna that horses said “hee haw” of all things.
That’s re-donk-ulous.
In fact, my most beloved toddler toy was, um, a stuffed giraffe, which I named Hee Haw, and insisted was a horse. I panicked when Mom washed it.
I really loved horses. There are photos of me in a tiny cowboy hat riding my spring-loaded rocking horse and a giant pillow with a plastic horse head modeled after Fury the TV horse. I can’t find a picture of that, but I did eventually have this 1964 book.
By the time I was past the toddler years I already had a collection of porcelain horses, given to me by my Swedish grandfather. He must have had a lot of faith in me not to break them. More have been broken by house cleaners than were broken by me.
This is what’s left.
I drew horses constantly as a kid. It gave me something to do when I was done with schoolwork. No photos of those sad things are available. I didn’t actually know many horses, so they were a little off, even though I stared at my Album of Horses book and repeatedly read Black Beauty. I must have been a tiresome child. I went through a lot of crayons and paper.
Time to pause for the Daily Whine
That tiresomeness hasn’t changed. I still make very annoying word choices (like over apologizing) due to my long-term self esteem issues, which embarrasses me, which makes my dedicated efforts to love myself just as I am even more challenging. huh.
Let’s talk about how I did my best to soothe my soul today.
Even though it was pretty nippy outside due to a biting wind, I went for a nice walk in the woods, since cattle weren’t in that pasture at the moment.
I got to enjoy watching this happy young snapping turtle.
I found a few signs of fall color and enjoyed watching my “secret spring” behind the back pond. It’s not really a secret, but probably only Sara and I have really noticed it. Maybe Kathleen did when she was meditating in the woods. We’re all forest bathers!
Look! Colors!Cottonwood Big and little sycamore leavesSpring heading to the main spring The springHoney locust in Christmas colors My favorite yaupon holly treeGorgeous asters
There were even a few birds to watch. Now that most of the leaves are off the trees I can see the chickadees, titmice, sparrows, and vireos much better.
In addition to this egret who was checking out the shallow seasonal pools and lots of swirling vultures, Merlin heard a new bird, more than once, even: an evening grosbeak. I’d love to see it.
Great egret watching meIt went to another pond The vultures were flying overhead and making fun shadowsYour Daily Bird.
Anyway, all the dark trees, the bright green rye grass, and wintry blue skies made me relax a bit and got me ready for toting numerous 50-pound bags of horse and chicken feed later.
Poison ivy berries in rotting stump. Hmm. Walker’s Creek Pond on the other side of the woodsMorning sunCool treeAnother cool tree.
What an odd question, but one I can answer without torturing myself or becoming angsty. Hooray!
What’s going on here?
First off, I’m spending my evening basking in the genuinely pleasant, damp weather. What? It rained! It was the first significant rain since June 16. And for once, we didn’t immediately flood. We just got about a quarter inch that can soak in. It’s going to rain for the next few days, so goodbye to the Heat Dome of Hades! The high today didn’t even hit 90°.
Rain. Really.
This evening I also got my hair cut, which was long overdue. It’s growing out a bit. My hair stylist is a real hoot, too. She ran to her salon from a cross country meet, cut my hair in a half hour, then ran back to JV football practice. That’s one busy mom.
Is that me?
She cut my hair dry and straightened it as she cut it. It was an interesting technique and magically made my growing out layers look perfect. I don’t get to see my hair straight very often, so I enjoyed this experience a lot. The back looks pretty, too.
That looks fancy. I’m told it will also look good with my waves. I wonder if it look great all sweaty?
The rest of the evening has been spent hanging out with Lee and the dogs. Lee has some virus, but cooked dinner to cheer himself up. After that, I knitted and hung out with Carlton. That’s so perfect.
My favorite evening setting.
Well, it’s perfect other than getting all his precious white hair all over my shirt and temperature blanket.
Short haired dogs shed, too.
Lee has been lying on the couch all night feeling feverish. The dogs felt compelled to cool him off. At one point Penney was on one side licking his hand, while Harvey was on the other side, licking his leg through his pants. Goldie hasn’t left his side. Like the horses, dogs know when people feel bad.
Feel better, Daddy!
And that’s my exciting evening. I was at an online conference all day, so knitting and blogging is about all I can handle. The rest of the week will be more fun. Why did they ask this on a Wednesday?
I thought about this all day long today, and I had plenty of time to think as I worked in the actual Dell Technologies offices today. The scenery didn’t distract me, even though I had a window view.
Ooh, look, the 45 Toll Road! It leads straight to my dentist, which is why I was in the area.
I’m sure there’s some Golden Perfect week that involves riding horses on the beach, bathing in a spring-fed pond, working on the Great Sunarian Novel, knitting in a hammock on a porch with bird feeders nearby, and eating nothing but oysters, fish, fresh veggies and ripe fruit…but that’s not realistic.
Excuse me, you forgot to mention petting dogs.
Realistically, I think I’ve got all the ingredients it takes to make for a perfect week, right here in scenic Milam County, Texas. Here are the components of my perfect week, which might not all occur in any one week:
Meaningful work. I’m glad I have a job I like to bring in money and challenge me.
Writing. I’ll have to write every day, line I do now.
Reading. I read constantly when not knitting, writing, or horsing.
Horses. Every day I want quality time with horses, to make up for the years I didn’t have any. I will keep riding and learning.
Other pets. I have to be with the doggies and chickens to remind myself there are so many ways to live and love.
Volunteer work. I like my Master Naturalist work and want to do it as much as I can squeeze in.
Swimming. I never used to like it, but I enjoy it all year now.
Meditation. As I wrote about earlier, it’s part of any ideal week.
Travel. Not every week, but often, I want to go camping, or to a condo in a new place.
Friends. I love that I have scheduled times to see friends in person and Zoom every week.
Family. Time just talking and laughing with Lee hard to happen regularly. I’m hoping tune with the rest of the family will become regular soon.
Hanging out in nature. It’s a must or I get all irritated and irritating. I need to feel like I’m a small part of the big picture.
Wow. I just kept going there. The good news is that I usually have most of these things every week, so my life is now ideal. Yay, I made it to where I hoped I’d be when I was younger!
Note: in any ideal week the temperature will NOT be over 100°F nor will there be a polar vortex. But, thanks, humanity, you’ve guaranteed extremes for the rest of my life. That’s not ideal, is it?
For a person with anxiety, I’m relaxed much of the time. That’s because I’ve had decades of practice finding ways to relax both my body and my mind. Here’s what I do.
Meditation: my goodness have I meditated a lot in my lifetime, probably years if you add it all up. I started so long ago that it was called TM, or transcendental meditation. I read a lot of books on it, though I never took a class. It was really helpful during my teen years.
There’s a Buddha in here somewhere
Eventually I learned yoga, too, and did a lot of meditation in my spiritual activities. That Starhawk lady had a lot of fun guided meditations that let me help others meditate. I really grew to treasure my time breathing and centering as it became part of my spiritual practice and as I learned more Buddhist teachings. There are so many ways to meditate that I never get bored.
Anyway, it’s relaxing, too.
Knitting: I’ve knitted to relax even longer than I’ve meditated. I learned that from my female relatives, who all seemed to pick up their knitting or crocheting when things got tense.
The repetition and tactile pleasure of handcrafts is soothing both physically and mentally. I especially enjoy it when it’s just complicated enough to keep negative thoughts at bay.
This project isn’t hard, just bulky.
And when truly stressed, knitting can keep me from opening my mouth and making a fool out of myself. I still remember the sock I worked on the day I was told my services were no longer needed at the nonprofit organization. I sat in my office that day and knitted furiously. That sock (it was yellow and blue, as I recall) would not fit onto my foot. For once I didn’t knit too loosely!
I’m just full of stories, huh.
Reading: No doubt many of us read to relax. These days I find fiction fun but not relaxing. I get too involved. I much prefer nonfiction or magazines.
I used to be more organized I’m getting used to Kindle reading
Geez, I love magazines. I love learning about things I’d never thought of before, and I can lose myself in the photography, from home interiors to nature to fast cars and of course to pretty horses.
Some magazines. And books.
Pets: all my pets relax me. Okay, sometimes they add to stress, but mostly being with warm, entertaining nonhumans is a great way to relax. Stroking a happy doggy has to add endorphins. I have watched the chickens pecking, clucking, and slurping their water for long stretches of time, too.
Happy and relaxed doggies
I have to admit I spend even more time just hanging around with Fiona and the horses. They are so friendly and trusting. We hang out a lot, with them napping and me stroking their necks. Ahhh.
The Hermits' Rest 