Lee – Page 3 – The Hermits' Rest

Twelve Years Ago Today

Twelve years ago today was a day much like today, although a little warmer. It was cloudy and a bit gloomy. I was, as usual, a little bit stressed. But much of it was GOOD stress, because I was looking forward to the wedding of my (quirky) dreams to the quirky man of my dreams, Lee.

While the setting was great, what was most important was that I was surrounded by the people I loved the most in the world. My beloved father and my sister had both joined us, and my two sons were there, pitching in and helping. I had some of the best friends I could ask for participating in the wedding, ranging from my church family to my dear knitting friends. And when you threw in the people who came, including kids from the band bus, a high school friend, and Chris, who I met that day…wow, what happiness.

As long as Lee and I were publicly declaring our intentions to be a family for the rest of our lives, I didn’t care about the rest. I’m just so glad to have him at my side (figuratively right now) as we experience the joys and sorrows, fun times and challenges of the latter part of our lives. Better late than never!

Sitting here, separated by two counties and 80 miles away from my husband, and with yet ANOTHER exposure to deal with and keep me away, I’m getting a lot of comfort from remembering how our wedding came out so well.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This

People who’ve known me since 2008 will know this, but I’d like to share anyway. What else is a blog for? We got married just before sunset on the labyrinth at Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church. That was special to me, because I helped build the labyrinth.

We had two wonderful officiants, a long-time pagan UU friend (Linda) and one of the ministers at our church (Kathleen). We had beautiful vows that Linda helped us write.

My attendants each dressed in an appropriate color and carried a symbol for earth, air, fire, and water. They were good sports, especially the LDS and evangelical ones.

Carolyn (fire), Suzanne (water), me, Deana (earth – she’s carrying a crystal), and Susan (air)

My sons escorted me down the aisle, wearing neckties with the tartan of their father’s ancestral land in Ireland.

My dad gave “approval” in the ceremony.

We had great music. My friend Jeff, who’d lived with us for a long time, played my favorite instrumental piece that he wrote as we walked around the labyrinth (shortened so it wouldn’t be interminable). And Bill, from my folk trio, sang “My Beautiful Mystery Companion,” by Jackson Browne. All the music was great.

As the ceremony went on I looked around and saw my entire community. I never felt so supported in my life. There were my neighbors, old friends, new friends, young people and elderly folks, all in a circle, surrounding us with love.

Even the decorations and the reception were done by friends. My dress was incredible, a “real” wedding dress, just red, that my friend Katy helped me order in San Marcos, where she’d gotten her dress. The flowers came from Costco, and we just arranged them in vases we already had (except the one BIG arrangement).

We ran out of red and gold, so we put the pink ones in a separate area.

My friend Tina was there to help with decorating and all the logistics, while Elizabeth baked the beautiful cake with the topper that looked just like us.

I found this wedding topper on Ebay. I couldn’t believe I found a bride wearing a red dress, and both with the right hair colors.

Elizabeth making the cake. I can’t find a photo of the finished product, but I know there were some!

The days before the wedding were hectic, but fun, as all these folks, plus my dad and sister, were helping set up.

You can see how tired I was the day before the wedding. Tina was holding me up.

We had a fun reception, where my friends played music and everyone got to eat barbecue from our favorite resturant (and were glad to be indoors, since it really cooled off once the sun went down).

Pre-wedding photo of me and Parker (who is now Kate) making the signs directing people to the wedding. I miss the pansy wallpaper, still, but not the decorative fly swatter.

I was glad to have my wedding shawl, which was made from wool I picked out and was spun by my friend Jody. I knitted it to be filled with beads, so it made great noises, and laid perfectly against the dress.

Here’s a good view of my shawl. Linda is beaming at us from an altar with a cloth from my friends Gregory and Ravi’s wedding, which had the same colors. That’s Martha in the black shawl.

Memories like this help you get through hard times. Knowing that I’m still friends with nearly everyone who attended warms my heart. Following all these people over the past twelve years has brought so many changes. Birth, deaths, marriages, divorces, new names, new careers, moves to distant places, and so much more. Community. A varied and colorful community. And someone to enjoy it all with. That makes life great.

So many people helped! Canova arranged the peacock feathers, which came from Lee’s niece’s birds.

Thank you, Lee, for sticking with me as these darned quarantines keep getting expanded and expanded. Thanks for listening to me and making me think. Together, I hope we get to enjoy many more years. I’m glad we found each other, at last.

We’re older and our hair is different colors, but it’s still us!

Thanks for taking this trip down memory lane for me. It sure made another quarantined Sunday happier for me.

Lee’s Got an Office, Too

Yesterday, my spousal unit, also got a lot of his office furniture moved in. He has a massive and beautiful desk and credenza that we’re quite the doozy to get over here. Thank goodness Chris was able to help with the desk. They had to rest afterwards!

It’s a good thing Lee got one of the larger offices, because that desk takes up quite a bit of real estate! I love how the green leather on it picks up the green in the shiplap wall. It makes it all look on purpose!

The carving on the desk is really nice. He got the set used. I guess some company decided dark wood was not modern.

Lee plans to get seating in the room that’s comfy for his Hermits’ Rest Enterprises visitors, who will be able to enter through his private door and not interfere with operations at Hearts Homes and Hands.

These chairs will do for now! (The blinds make it hard to get the lighting right.)

He also decided that his old desk lamp won’t work in this office, so he has ordered a stained glass one. It will be nice to have a touch of color, I think.

He’s still bringing in art and such, but it’s just about ready to function.

It’s a crazy time for all of us, but now we have non-dungeon offices to work in. I know that’s made my morning good. Off to face the afternoon, with hopes that all of you readers have something to look forward to, as well.

Family Kudos

I just wanted to say how happy I am with the amazing job our little family team has been doing as we work together to build our Hearts, Homes and Hands (HHH) business over the past year plus. We each have contributed time, effort, and sweat to the endeavor. And it’s been quite a learning process! No doubt it will continue to be.

I rarely get to share decorative plants, so here are some I saw walking around our Austin neighborhood.

I encourage all the readers of this blog to also follow the HHH blog, which features lots of writing on elder care and health issues, along with business updates. That’s where you hear more from our chief hermit, Lee, too.

My contribution is helpful, but minimal, since I have another full-time job at the moment. I do the blog, maintain the Facebook page and LinkedIn, and write some newspaper articles. And I help with renovating our buildings by selecting materials and such.

On the other hand, Kathleen, Lee, and Chris have been working so, so hard that it’s been hard on their mental and physical health. Still they’ve kept going, and it shows by how much the business has grown!

Lee has become quite the financial analyst for a writer, or for anyone. He helps us see where we’ve been and where we’re going. His attention to detail awes me.

I’ve mentioned Chris and his work many times here, since I enjoy sharing rehab updates. His ability to design structures and then build them has been amazing to watch. The stairs! The crown molding! My bathroom! The ceilings! I can’t wait until he can have a team helping him, which will be a lot easier when the office is done. I’m really grateful for his patience and willingness to do this work.

And wow, Kathleen has done a yeoman’s job of getting us set up, keeping state-required records, training the initial staff, and recruiting customers. It’s really a job for more than one person, and it’s been hard on her! Many days she just comes home and goes to bed, unable to deal with anything else! I don’t blame her one bit.

I’m glad she’s got enough staff trained to help with the day-to-day operations of our business, because I know she will really be an amazing marketer when her time is less booked. Well, and when the pandemic makes doing things in person a challenge.

That’s the thing, we’ve done darned well to be still going after the past few months. I’m so grateful for all our talented family members, and for the great staff that is providing the much-needed personal assistance service to this county. Kudos to all.

Sure, I Relax

It was nice to get home from work and think about what’s eternal.

One thing is learning. I’m loving the book I’m reading, perhaps too much. The person who wrote How to Be an Antiracist has managed to clarify all sorts of muddy questions and gut feelings I have about race, class, and political systems. Perhaps this is not the most relaxing book ever, but it makes so much sense that my brain feels tidier or something. More on this when I’m done!

The other eternal thing is life going on about its cycles. I’m surrounded by birth, death, old age, and metamorphosis every day. The new calf, Nicole’s son who will arrive in a month, the lady in Cameron who died in the fire and had cooked all those burgers, Lee and me, a butterfly. I treasure all of it!

Now to stop writing so much and share photos of what relaxes me.

Happy to enjoy our golden years (ha ha) at the Hermits’ Rest.

What Have You Made Better?

One thing you can always count on me and my spouse, Lee, for is that we are looking to do better in the world, do better for each other, and do better for ourselves. Lately, Lee has been listening to dozens and dozens of podcasts, and is especially fond of the Daily Stoic. It applies ancient philosophy to today’s world, and has been really useful for Lee. There are books and such, too, which you can find on their website.

Most mornings while we are drinking coffee, Lee asks me some question he found in one of his podcasts, which helps me be more conversational (I’m not a morning person and neither is he, really). One of his questions is where I got the recent topic of saying “I get to” rather than “I’ve got to.”

Today he asked me what I’d done to make something better. He said it could be big or small, for myself or someone else. His answer was that he’d improved a QuickBooks process (which makes things much better for Mr. QuickBooks).

I fumbled around a bit, but then realized I’d posted a status on my public Facebook page last night that asked people what made them smile that day.

I think 65 comments is pretty good engagement!

The answers cheered me up, cheered other readers up, and no doubt helped people who maybe didn’t smile much that day remember something good that had happened. It was a simple thing, just asking a question, but it encouraged conversation and made people’s day better.

I got the idea from Joanna Fontaine Crawford, the minister at Live Oak UU Church, who very often asks questions like this and gets a lot of conversation going. I like it, because the questions come across as genuine, and not like it’s some meme that you are supposed to be guilted into copying and pasted. Asking a REAL question gets real answers!

So, think about it, what have you made better so far today (or yesterday)? Ask yourself this every day, and your mindset can’t help but shift to a more positive direction. I plan to keep up both the practice of asking good questions and checking on what I did to make something better each day.

Thanks, Lee!

Pee at Last! With Stereo!

We have running water at the Pope house! and I got to be the first to use the toilet in my new bathroom! Now THAT is progress, my friends.

Note that the toilet was re-used, and was at the house when we got it. It was pretty new, so Ms Erma must have replaced it recently before she moved out.

One, um, interesting detail is that since the window we installed had to be low, due to the stairs, you get to enjoy the entire neighborhood and traffic (such as it is) on College Avenue as you sit on the throne. That makes me glad we got blinds to install.

You actually see more of the road out the window. And obviously it couldn’t be any higher!

Other plumbing also got done. The other bathroom is now fully functional.

That mirror is tiny. It’s hung now, but useless to tall people.

As I mentioned yesterday, Chris has requested we never get a faucet like this very cute one again. It took many hours to finish it today.

We also lost the pedestal sink we’d wanted to re-use. It broke as Chris tried to work on it. That means I get to pick a new one. It has to be small!

Tubby is looking forward to this new faucet. It didn’t come in black.

Lee’s Office Improvements

Lee spent most of yesterday on his most important office feature, the sound system. He re-did his mother’s old stereo cabinet to have modern insides (removing a rat nest from inside, mmm).

He put in a new tuner and speakers and will add a modern turntable.

He was proud of the finished product, which also needs new cloth in front of the speakers.

As far as he’s concerned, with the added chair, he’s done. It sounds great, by the way.

Next up is the water heater. Our dream of hot water will finally come true. It will have to wait until Monday, though. There’s ranch and Ross stuff to do today.

There’s Always Something to Be Grateful For

Yes, today’s word is gratitude. You knew that one was coming, right. Those of us working on our attitudes are told by all our self-help books, tapes to keep gratitude journals, because it actually makes us feel better at a brain chemistry level. I know my spouse does it every day and it’s been really good for him.

I don’t write a gratitude journal, but I’ve been practicing just “noticing” where I am and what is going on, often through the day. This just leads to gratitude welling up in me. Corny as it may seem, I’m often just grateful for the privilege of being here on this earth, able to live and continue to learn every day.

Just noticing where I was. Grateful for the ever-entertaining ducks of Cameron.

Today, I awoke from the first decent sleep I’ve had in a while, looked out at my chickens, who got through a pretty bad storm last night, and was glad to see that my sadness of the past few days had moved on to a new phase. The first song I heard this morning said it well:

Let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day
Raglan Road, Irish folk song

I’m practicing being grateful even for the stumbling blocks and unexpected changes life brings, which I’ll talk about more in the next post. Right now, I just want to share how grateful I am for my support system, including these precious beings, who have really improved their behavior lately.

Lee is ready for when we are allowed to open our office and need to wear scrubs!

And I’m grateful for my family and close friends (thanks Anita and Mike) for listening to my vents yesterday. I feel very well cared for, with Chris sharing his stories of similar things in his life, and Lee jumping right into lists for planning our future. With this network of support, I’ll get by.

We all deserve a support network when things get weird, and by gosh, things are weird for everyone right now, and lots of us have other things piling on top of the isolation. If I can EVER be a listening ear for YOU, I’m here. I want to pay forward the kindnesses for which I am so grateful.

Your thoughts are always welcome, friends.

Need Inspiration? Here’s Some!

Now, here’s a thing. Hard times bring out the best and worst of people, right? It seems like a lot of folks are concentrating on the stuff that makes you just shake your head. The economy is more important than the lives of the elderly, having a lifetime supply of paper products is more important than other people having it, the world is just going to fall apart if you don’t have bread NOW. Wipe those thoughts away, right this second!

The UU word for today is inspiration, and that sent me right off into a wonderful frame of mind, where I realize that I am inspired by people near and far, ever single day of the Great Isolation.

Be inspired by our revamped shiplap wall. Lee and Chris worked so hard on it. I later cleaned all those bits of wallpaper off.

My family come first when I think of inspiration. We’re all sticking it out as best as we can. I wish I could be with my kids, but I’m impressed by how well they are handling themselves. I drive by my sister’s house every day and wave, knowing it’s safer to stay distant, but proud of how she’s coping.

Look how light and bright it is in Lee’s office with new window trim.

And then there’s the family I live with. Kathleen has been working herself so hard to get our business going in these hard times, and by golly, she’s succeeding! We have so much business that we have more staff and had to buy a bunch of scrubs for everyone to wear. And all the safety and health precautions keep adding up, but she keeps everyone on track. And I think I’d explode if I had to print as many forms and information as she does. She’s a real inspiration to me and to the rest of us. You just deal with what you get!

Kathleen says I can have these lovely, huge scrubs.

I’m also inspired by Chris, who is keeping our renovation project going with just occasional help from Easton (because Easton is also working for our business). He has so many great ideas and the skills to make them come to life. It’s really awesome to see someone find creativity in physical things and get as much joy out of it as I do with writing and making help systems.

In the rest of the world, I see so many ministers out there helping people in new and innovative ways. They inspire me to keep in touch and support the folks who depend on me, as well (shout-out to the Live Oak UU team and so many others). People need spiritual support, and these folks are figuring out ways to provide it.

Bluebonnets on the sidewalk. Inspirational beauty.

And, well, you know this was coming. Every day I’m inspired by Mother Nature, as spring keeps on springing, butterflies and birds are mating, and the grass is so green it hurts my eyes. That’s inspiration to keep on keeping on: just the chance to enjoy one more spring.

Ups and Downs of Small-Town Businesses

Now that I think Pickle and Vlassic are over their foam-eating issues, I can return to other topics. One that has especially interested me is how people in and around Cameron feel about the customer service mentality in the area. I may have mentioned that a couple days ago, Lee wrote a blog post about why Cameron has such a hard time keeping restaurants open.

Lee’s photo of the former Sonic, now up for sale.

Usually, our blog posts and Facebook business page posts get between 100-200 views/hits each. Not this one. The Facebook one has 2500 views and 14 shares. Mandi said the one on her page also got lots of shares. The website stats look hilarious. There were 1500 hits that day, which made the previous week look totally flat.

So, yeah, Lee’s thoughts on this topic struck a nerve. I’ve been hanging around Cameron for just nine years now, but I’ve seen so many places open and close right up. One has done it at least four times (I’m not naming names, just noting facts). When I talked to a former cafe owner, she said people would just walk off their jobs or not show up because they didn’t feel like it. Turnover was huge. Just a week or two ago we went to a local place where only the cashier had showed up, so she was trying to wait tables. It didn’t go well.

Who’s Lee? Does He Say Anything?

Lee as the cover of a romance novel for middle-aged women.

Lee is my spouse! I’ve mentioned him before, I just know it. Oh, I can be funny.

We will have been married 11 years on Friday. He’s a hermit. But he does right a lot. You’ve perhaps seen some of his posts on our Hermit Haus Redevelopment blog or the new Hearts, Homes and Hands blog. Still, he told me he wondered why no one seems to come across his personal blog, while I get a reasonable number of hits.

I told him no one’s going to just stumble over it; they have to know it’s there. I share.

Now I will share Lee!

If you’d like to learn a little bit about him, head over to The Hermitage, a blog he’s been keeping since I met him. There he gets to control all his HTML and format all his pictures exactly how he likes it, and that makes him happy.

None of this WordPress hand-holding for him! Right now, he’s sharing what he’s grateful for, and I’m happy to be one of those things.

I’m grateful for my spousal unit, too. He’s really kind, generous, stubborn, and occasionally grumpy. Other times, he’s funny and sweet. In other words, he’s human!

One thing that makes us a fun couple is how different we are. Go see him and find out for yourself! Give him a comment or follow him on Blogger.