mistakes – The Hermits' Rest

Consequences of the Cold

The recent cold spell has taken a lot out of me. Combined with mourning from losing Goldie and being sad that the Red House on Fannin got rented out, I’ve been not much fun. I’m glad we will get income from the house, but it was fun fixing it up to be the Airbnb. Another failed enterprise. We’re racking them up.

In good news, I unpacked these pretty things from boxes we’d stored at the Red House.

I’m not going to be a part of any more joint ventures with friends and family from now on. Hold me to that. I really stink at such things, and sitting inside in the cold gave me too much time to dwell on past mistakes, knowing perfectly well that beating myself up over past errors and regrets in judgement is not productive. Learn from mistakes and move on, I’ve been repeating that.

I also found my really good bowls and gave away many things to my son and his coworkers. That felt good.

The cold was hard on the birds I usually hang out with, too. For two days in a row I only observed a few birds on Merlin. Yesterday, it saddened me to find one of the male Barn Swallow scouts had died on the porch. I put it safely to rest and then washed my hands a lot in case he had bird flu.

The chickens and Connie made it through the cold snap by staying in their house. They didn’t stop laying eggs, though. Today they were back to normal outdoor activities and Connie finally laid a big ole turkey egg. Here it is compared to her first egg (I saved it).

Today it finally warmed up and I was able to spend my usual amount of time outside. It made a big difference, since I started the day really dragging and ended up with stories to tell Lee.

All the chairs now have cushions, making for good patio time.

I was able to pull some burs off the equines and do more than stick food under their noses and flee. That pleased everyone but Drew, who just isn’t in a good space.

Since I was out a lot, I got to hear and see fun bird action. The Barred Owl was hooting much of the day, which is always fun. There were ducks flying around, too, at least three kinds. Of course, the sparrows, chickadees, and Cardinals entertained a lot. They all seemed glad it warmed up.

I was walking along the fence line listening to a Red-tailed Hawk making some of its weird calls when something white bounced off my head. I looked up to see all the mistletoe above me was full of round, white berries.

Did one just fall on me? No. It quickly became obvious that one of the Mockingbirds had dropped it. It hopped over to the fence then into the bush next to me, scolding me with mistletoe still in its beak. I understood that I was on his territory (must be a male, because he’d been singing earlier) and retreated with a smile on my face.

Hooray. I need my bird observation and horse time to keep me out of my funks and remind me about that living in the moment thing I’m supposed to be aiming for. Darn those polar vortexes.

Suna, Stop Being So Hard on Yourself, You Doofus

Oh, Self, you are still listening to a long-ago admonition you think your dad made. You think he expected you to excel at everything you tried to do, and at least be in the top 10% (whew, that excused that B in PE and Algebra 2 that made me not the best in high school—I was not athletic or mathematical until much later in life).

This volunteer portulaca also doesn’t like math. It interrupts the grid.

I’ve always felt literal shame if I got a bad review at work (my interpretation of “bad” was anything other than world’s greatest employee). I just never took criticism well, for no good reason. I just was screwed up from childhood. I’ve gotten better, but when people I care about give harsh criticism, I still fall apart. Nonetheless, honest, I’m way better. I do realize I don’t have to be perfect to be valuable and lovable. In fact, some/many people like me just the way I am, and I BELIEVE it!

Still, I let myself fall into old patterns over the weekend and was all disappointed that Apache and I didn’t rank well at the horse show. At the time, I told myself I was being ridiculous, because we did the best we could, considering our health.

I’m glad Tarrin finally got to use some of her 4th and 5th place ribbons. That means lots of entrants!

Well, I was really being a doofus (just gently ribbing myself), because when I took the time to look at the results, I actually got my best scores with Apache in all the areas except the last one , when I was just trying to survive without passing out. And that was as good as the last show.

I have to remember that Apache really didn’t know how to run properly without a rider, much less with a fearful, bouncing old lady on him!

So, this just presents a confirmation that comparing yourself to others is not at all good for you. The other riders were simply better than me, and on their own path to improve their own skills. As Sara said to me, I’ve come farther than she ever thought I would. I agree. We aren’t talented or young, either of us, but Apache and I keep at it!

I’m proud of our spirit and grit, even if we’re not going to be the “best!” We’re our best.

(By the way, Drew and I are getting along much better.)

Listening?

What do you listen to while you work?

The prompt for today was easy. I listen to things at work, but not music or podcasts. Here are the things in the background when I’m working from home:

Dogs barking. The most annoying sound. Love the dogs, not as fond of being notified every time a cow moves.
The ice maker. This went away for a while when it moved up to my bedroom (and was turned off at night) and in winter, when the residents don’t need so much ice for basic survival. It hums, whirs, and clatters along quite briskly.
Swallows. They may not be breeding, but they are still swooping into the semi-enclosed area outside my office and yelling at each other.

That’s not so bad. I like to write in quiet, so I think I’m pretty lucky.

Today, however, I worked to the sound of music on hold, as I patiently waited AT&T out. I knew if I just let them yammer on and try to sell me shit, they’d eventually realize they’d been charging me for a broken modem that they no longer service and come groveling back. I did a lot of deep breathing, attended an online conversation with friends, and just kept saying Okay when I was put on brief holds for 2.5 hours. I ended up getting refunds for the broken equipment back to the beginning of the year, no charge for my hotspot that I use in the RV because it’s no good at home, and $55 a month off our satellite tv for a year. HA!

I was so busy today the only photo I took was my fingernails.

I’m glad that went well, since I messed a bunch of other stuff up and was displeased with my lack of attention to detail. I messed up an Airbnb reservation, but if I PAY ATTENTION I can end up making money. I just need to wait two months.

Then I realized my reservation for my next Myrtle Beach trip was for only a one-bedroom condo. I was just sure it was two, because I didn’t look hard enough. There goes my visit with my stepsister, who needs a good bed. I’m gonna visit with them somehow in the not-too-distant future. Or else. And I doubt my other friends will want to visit either. Not much privacy.

There’s a reason I’m not in charge of business stuff usually. I can’t keep all the details straight.

In better news, the reason I skipped blogging yesterday was that I drove over to the ever-expanding suburbs to see my friends Susan and Brian, who were in Texas to meet their newest grandchild. That was a happy reunion. The baby was doing well and had bright, white hair. Really cool. We ate at a nearby Pan Asian restaurant. I got phô and sushi both. Heavenly.

Susan and I are trying to look friendly across a table.

Mostly we talked and talked. It was good to talk and talk in person rather than on Zoom. Susan and I are old friends with much history and much in common, so there’s much to cram in during just one meal. Brian did get in a few stories, too. It was quite cathartic. New grandparents have to do a lot of tongue biting, you know. I did do listening last night, so I’m barely sticking to my topic.

I did take another photo. Spotted Cucumber beetle (*Diabrotica undecimpunctata*) — a major agricultural pest.

Other than that, I’m still having trouble with the heat, as are the animals. The horses are very jealous of shade patches and are grumpy. Fiona is especially full of territorial kicks. No listening there. At least the Zyrtec is helping Apache.

Bloggers Need Topics

I don’t have a topic today. Things are going along all right, with few exciting developments that I can talk about. That’s not bad at all. We all need some mostly drama-free periods in our lives.

The best thing about today was that there were a few clouds in the sky. The heat dome is moving away at last, and we will be back to normal levels of hotness.

The grass is turning it’s normal summer brown, though, and I saw my first cracks in the dirt today.

I’ve managed to not get too hot this week by doing horse things early, when I have no early meetings, and feeding the horses in a wet bathing suit. Hey, no one can see me! And Drew likes the pool water smell.

I like the smell of fresh trough water, myself.

Mostly I’ve been going through one of my awkward periods where I express myself poorly and upset people, or feel like a fifth wheel in conversations. I know when I start feeling bad about myself that it’s time to apologize, remind myself I’m as good a person as I can be, and to remember that sometimes your best isn’t good enough.

Yes, then I need to think about Apache and how long my well-meaning efforts weren’t enough for our relationship, but with some help, we got to communicate better. I’ll just listen to helpful people about remedying my faux pas and maybe do some improvements in interpersonal relationships. Being a hermit who wants to make friends is complicated!

Let’s talk about knitting. I finished row 2 of the second unit of the giant temperature blanket and can see it was warming up quickly once May rolled around (after the black square). We got our first red squares, which are over 90°. I was thinking today that I could enter the first bit in the art contest at the Master Naturalist conference. It’s a piece of citizen science, after all. I’d have to type up a nice legend and explanation.

One more piece is f good news is a volunteer tomato plant. It’s with the squash behind the chicken house. Just hope no one mows it! I keep forgetting to mark the “plants” as opposed to cockleburs.

I hope you’re all doing well. Please know that I care about you all, appreciate your feedback, and love hearing your own stories.

Earth Day Campout Highlights

Most of today has been great. The big highlights were predominantly nature oriented, but I also rekindled some old friendships and made some fun new friends.

After coffee by a nice campfire I went on a brisk (for me) hike on the trail that goes around Lake Georgetown. The whole trail is 26 miles long, so no, we didn’t go the whole way. The weather was perfect, and we enjoyed going up and down the limestone escarpments. I didn’t take as many photos as usual, though I found a few new plants I had to record.

We enjoyed views of the lake and all its sights and sounds. I was sad to find zebra mussel shells on the shoreline. They’re very invasive. So is the Japanese honeysuckle we saw. But a black swallowtail cheered me up.

In our way back, I remarked to Mike that we were in the perfect habitat for golden-cheeked warblers, with Ashe junipers and native oaks. I swear only three steps later, the blaring “la cucaracha” call rang out! We never spotted the bird, but it sang for quite a while. Great Earth Day experience! Here is scenery from the trail.

I was ready for a nice rest after the hike, so I hung out with Lee for a while. Then I did some chatting with new arrivals. Of course there were some campsite emergencies that we helped take care of. The afternoon culminated with a tradition campout potluck meal. Unfortunately, the original location was lost, and I offered our shelter for the food.

I didn’t realize everyone would sit next to our motorhome. It was too hard for Lee to be near people for that long, so I won’t make that error again! I made a couple other mistakes being too hospitable, but I’ve learned the hard way to keep folks away from the RV. I sure feel bad for that!

Young and old gathered. Loudly. Fun for non-hermits.

We did find the summer tanager again, which helped a little. I’m very grateful to the Merlin app that identifies bird calls, even though at first it said it was a Baltimore oriole, which got us overly excited. Away from the crowd, it got the ID right, plus we saw the bird and it was red, not orange. I ended up getting extra blurry photos of the male and a better one of the female. They are beautiful birds with a beautiful song.

It was fun to show birds and plants to others. I wish there were opportunities to do this at parks in Milam County for volunteer hours!

Crafty Crafting

It’s nice to be back to normal. Life here is just fine, working hard, playing with horses, and enjoying new plants as they return each season. No complaints.

I’m glad I’ve relaxed about a lot of things, like caring about people’s opinions of me, trying to lose weight…etc. One thing I’ve also let go of is trying to be perfect in my crafts. I always used to beat myself up over mistakes. Now I just go with it.

I’ve been putting a very bright border on the mosaic rug I’m working on. About halfway through, I realized the first row should have been the orange color. Shoot. But I just kept going. Now that I got to the end, I got crafty.

The example, with slip stitch embellishment at top.

I decided to add some embellishments in the right color and I think it looks cute! I’m just slip stitching, and I think it looks correct from a distance and interesting up close. I’m going to add another border repeat in two other colors. Then poor, patient Rollie will finally get their Christmas gift!

Here’s to crafty crafts and embracing imperfections!

Screw Up? Laugh at Yourself!

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.

Screwing Up

It happens. Happened to me. I was trying to be a good friend, but didn’t use good judgment. Did it go unnoticed?

Nothing goes unnoticed today, and by the end of the day, numerous people had reported to my spouse that I had made a mistake. Small town living at its finest.

graffiti that says paranoia — Can I climb out? Photo by *@gafutch via Twenty20*

That kind of thing can make you feel paranoid! Or, in my case, a lot of the work I’ve been doing on my “stuff” can fall away, and I end up acting like teen Suna with all the negative self-talk bubbling up.

I’ll take that as an educational moment, and one that can provide helpful insight into how my inner workings work, and maybe how many of us work. We may work to change ingrained patterns and know what our triggers are, but every so often, we’ll fall back into that hole.

What’s important is to learn to quickly pick ourselves up, reflect on what we can do differently next time, and (most important) shake off that self criticism and crawl out of the hole more quickly each time it happens.

a girl looking down, beside a ladder. — She did it; so can I. Photo by *@paigeinrealife via Twenty20*.

I even DREAMED I was climbing a rickety ladder, trying to get out of a hole. Like I’ve said before, my dreams contain very un-subtle metaphors.

Hug yourselves, friends. Our imperfect selves are here to learn to love and forgive not only others, but ourselves.

Wondering

How do you forgive yourself? Through prayer, meditation, invoking a higher power, or reading? Searching the internet for quotes by your favorite healing author?

What are some useful things to tell yourself (asking for a friend, ha ha)?