Tag: recognition

Surprises, Weird Ones

The last couple of days have been surprising in both good and weird ways. I’m feeling pretty darned good at the end of it all. So, what’s been going on?

The gods and goddesses must be smiling at me.

The only sad weird thing didn’t happen to me, but I saw the evidence after my horse lesson. I feel bad for the woman it happened to, though. Apparently, one of Tarrin’s other students arrived for her lesson and went to her trailer to let her horse out. There she was very surprised to find a bird impaled on the door. What a shock? How does a bird fly that hard into the back of a trailer that’s moving forward? That was a weird surprise! Everyone thought the bird was a mockingbird, but detective Suna figured out it was a cuckoo.

Brown wing feathers and a striped tail. Very unfortunate cuckoo.

Better surprise was that I had so much trouble getting Apache to go into his pen after we got home last night that Mabel snuck out. I tried to entice her with sweet feed, but she wouldn’t go in, so then Dusty went out. I was so tired and being attacked by mosquitoes that I just let them all out to enjoy the much nicer grass in the exercise area. Lee and I managed to get our gate to shut, so in the end, it was surprisingly fun.

Whee, this is fun.

This morning when I went out to check on them, every single one of them, even Apache, came up to say hi and hang out with me. Drew even tried to go on my walk with me, but I did shut the gate. They all seem to like me.

Good morning. Thanks for the grass.
Ok, you don’t have a halter, so I don’t have to play catch me.
I wish Jim hadn’t started mowing. But we found long grass anyway. Ha!
I’ll trim the driveway. No one mows the center strip.
Freedom fun.

Next happy surprises came midday, when I had lunch with my friends and we had so much fun that I had a hard time leaving. My segment of American society suddenly feels a little hope. It’s been so long that we are a bit giddy. I did have to leave to pick up my asthma inhaler (I only need it at times like this, when there are fires and Saharan dust in the air). There was a friendly pharmacy tech there, and she asked if I wanted my shingles vaccine first dose. I sure did! And there was no wait for the pharmacist to administer it, for free because I’m old! Surprise!

The pharmacist did it better than I do with Drew.

But wait, there’s more! I went back to work after the vaccination and got onto my regular monthly call with my contact at my actual employer, through which I’m contracted to Dell. I was surprised to see a second person was there, and they were all on camera. So I said hi and noticed they were really chipper. Finally they said they had good news. That surprised me. Apparently, they nominated me for some great contractor award and I won. That was very nice of them! You don’t get much recognition as a contractor, so that pleasant surprise was a great way to end my work day. I guess I’ll find out eventually what award I got.

It’s only been 31 years since my last award for technical writing (as evidenced by the dust on it—it was hiding in a box but Lee put it up).

Plus! At feeding time each horse and Fiona went right into their pens. I didn’t have to chase anyone. Whew.

So, see? Sometimes circumstances are really good! That’s life (and my arm feels fine, because I took ibuprofen.).

Milestone: it hit 100° here for the first time this year today. By this time last year we’d gone over 105° F.

She Cares

Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.

I’d love it if people said about me that I cared about others. Other stuff, well, we look different to everyone we interact with.

And sometimes I look goofy. This is me and my friend Phyllis pretending we’re eagles, because for some reason we were given eagle pins for bring Master Naturalist past Presidents.

I did manage to gussy myself up enough to approve of my hair and outfit for the party I was at this evening. As always, the Master Naturalist holiday party was fun, and it sure was nice to have it in one of the buildings our family worked on.

From the outside
Looking down at the setting
Comfy upstairs area
More upstairs
The location is the former JC Penney building

I enjoyed all the awards and recognition for people who worked so hard the past year. There were some heartfelt thanks for long-time officers who are moving on to let others do their jobs (some quite happily), and lots of happiness with new volunteers. I’m still the secretary, but enjoyed getting my eagle pin for being President, since I did it during COVID.

Alan is telling us why we are bald eagles

There were two things that touched me. One was that Catherine, who has commented often here in the past, gave me a beautiful old copy of O Pioneers! by Willa Cather. She said Cather reminded her of me. This is a book I’ve always meant to read-read, since I first read it when I was very young and don’t remember much except there were Swedish people in it. What a nice gift.

The second one was that I got the WOW iNaturalist award for the month from Linda Jo, our iNat cheerleader. It was for all the observations I got in the Pollinator BioBlitz in October. I didn’t think anyone had noticed that I did really well in it, but she did. I felt so good!

You can tell I was happy.

We did the Yankee gift swap thing as usual. I got my gift by stealing. It’s a cute glass birdbath I can use by the pool. My favorite part of the gift was a wooden dove that says “peace” that was part of the wrapping. Photos later.

I sure enjoyed my time with the generous and talented friends I’ve made in this program. I hope they know I’m saying nice things about all of them.