Back Home, Texas, Mice, and Technology

Well, hello friends. I have been home from Texas for a couple of days now. I slept well Tuesday night in my own bed. I changed the sheets and my bed had a lovely scent of Buff City Soap’s Narcissist scent. It smells so good.

In my mind yesterday I found myself still in Texas time and thinking about our routines, and how I have a love/dislike relationship with Texas.

• Are the boys up yet; is it time to head over to see them, aka 7:30 a.m?
• It’s 1:00 p.m. and are the boys in naps and quiet time?
• It’s 3:30 p.m. and are they up from nap/quiet time?
• It’s 7:00 p.m. and time for little Tracebug to go bed.
• It’s 8:00 p.m. and time for River to go to bed.
• It’s dark out and I guess the mice are glad I’ve gone so they can be?
• I wonder if traps have been ordered and can they get rid of those things before George goes.
• Do I have any scorpion surprises in my suitcase?

I love, love, love the ranch feeling. I love the sunsets. I love being just enough away from town to feel “away from town”. I loved the guesthouse (for a while til I was tortured by the mice) – how something so glamorous and beautiful could be sitting in the middle of mesquite trees and cactus and weeds in the middle of no where and be so classy. I love going to all the little towns around, Breckenridge, Graham, Cisco, Mineral Wells, Albany and even the bigger ones, Abilene, Weatherford, Fort Worth, Dallas (when the traffic is flowing, lol).

I love shopping all the little mop and pop shops in the little towns, and seeing the owners smile and light up when you walk in. I love the charm of once again seeing items in shops that are unique. I love seeing the hometown residents shopping in the shops in their little hometown. I love how my family there knows people every where they go – usually. I love eating at all the unique individually owned restaurants. I love the fancy schmancy steak houses in TX that mean business with their sprawling real estate in true western decor with real cowboys (men in cowboy hats) at dinner. Most of all I just like being there in TX with my family whatever we are doing. Even if we are quiet and not talking, I’m still with them, beside them, and there. I love how we can all do our own things and it’s ok. But when we do have time to talk the conversations can really be good.

I love the mesquite trees, the cactus, the roadrunners, the longhorns, the wildlife and hearing the coyotes in the distance knowing I’m safe tucked away inside (except for the mice, who may as well be howling themselves in the night).

However, I don’t like the mice and I’m not too fond of the scorpions. And I tremble knowing that rattle snakes have been on the front porch and on the ranch road nearby and are probably all around. So I respect the landscape all around.

I really thought that being alone in the ranch house would be the thing that would scare me the most unless it was an unruly thunderstorm with lots of hail and wind, a scorpion find, or a rattle snake sighting. I never even considered that it would be mice. It’s kind of like a bad movie, a horrible picture, or being told a horrible secret about someone – you know, the things you can “unsee” or “unhear”. It’s those kinds of things that try to smear out the good things because fear takes so much of your mental energy. It’s really paralyzing and when it’s over, it’s the thing your brain wants to have you remember the most.

I promise you those western mice are stubborn. I mean this is what the one looked like that day when I gave him a talk in the guesthouse near the fireplace. He was all bold and determined.

But I’m trying hard to not let it happen that the mice issue rules my visit memories. Because we had so many wonderful memories. Anyway, I just had to get all that out. I miss my Texas family already. I DID have fun with them.

But yeah, I’m still traumatized thinking about the mice. I’ve not ever had to experience mice infestation and it’s quite the problem over there and according to ChatGPT when George asked it, they probably need a professional exterminator at this point. It gave a chart differentiating an occasional mouse verses what is considered infestation. I’m just so glad to be back in my house. No mice peeking out at me when I watch TV. No mice crisscrossing in front of me while I’m watching TV or stepping out of bed in the morning. No mice scratching under, beside, or in my bed at 4:30 in the morning. No mice running around in the living room bumping into the things in the dark while I try to go to sleep. No mouse poop on tables, in beds. No mouse poop on the fresh laundry. No mouse poop on the pillow cases. No mouse poop on the fresh towels. No mouse poop in window sills. No mouse poop all over the floors everywhere. But I’m told this is a problem everywhere out there. I could not live there then. Not when it’s everywhere. I get a feeling though there’s a difference.

An occasional mouse is one thing but when it’s everywhere – it’s a massive issue. Thank goodness Katy’s house does not have these issues. An occasional mouse but not poop everywhere or to the extent of them skipping all around you while you live. I really don’t think anyone realized just how bad it was over there, as no one lives there and if you pop in during the day you would only see evidence of mouse poop but only if you were looking closely at things. I’m surprised at how much I keep thinking about it. I was trying to be brave and act like I was just camping in the rough you know. But that last night it was just overrun and they were taking over. I realized I couldn’t do it anymore. And I wondered from a health standpoint if I was stepping on poop and bringing it over and the kids crawling and playing on the floor. I wore my crocks a lot and my sandals. I never went barefoot in either house. So it’s possible to track in diseases. I did not think of that til the last night. I had vacuumed but after a few days more mice poop started to appear again on the floor.

Anyway I’m getting all freaked out thinking about it and I’m gonna hold on to the memories.

Geeky Moments

Since I’ve been home, aside from unpacking, doing laundry (George had quite an accumulation), paying Mom’s bills, and editing a video, I have had a few geeky moments. I was just in the mood to change a few things.

To Do List FAIL

Yesterday, I downloaded an app called Structured which would integrate with your iOS calendar and Reminders. I was so excited. I wanted 1) A cute aesthetic experience 2) An ability to better plan my day with time blocking b/c I always overbook the day 3) Shake my world up a little bit and do something different with to do lists and reminders.

OH MY GOSH. I loved the app. But, my iOS Reminder app is very full as I’ve used it faithfully now for a few years. It’s built out with all my to do’s, goals, Mom reminders, cleaning and household reminders, appointments, med reminders, YouTube reminders, health reminders (taking BP measurements, weigh in’s). I’ve used the honkers out of it. So it loaded all that into Structured like it was supposed to. I also had a lot of extra tasks for yesterday as it was the first full day back from the trip and I had rolled a lot over from last week. I had 54 to do items that I was having to assign a time to, tell it how long it would be and try to plan it in my day. I kept overlapping tasks as I couldn’t remember what times I had selected and what was free. I sat there for two hours and tried to make the app work. I had so much in there it got frozen. I deleted the app and felt bad as it was such a cute app, so I downloaded it again and tried to do things a different way, but ultimately deleted it again because I have 256 items scheduled across the year in my Reminder app and I realized this is not going to work for me at this stage. If I was just starting out to build a to do system – it would be great and THEN having it sync with your iOS apps on all devices would be great. But I cannot sit and plan my day out with every task. I even tried grouping things (housework from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.) but I didn’t like that as I had everything individually scheduled in iOS reminders – (like dusting my bedroom, or wiping down the stainless fridge and dishwasher) set on repeat for certain times. So I gave up on the cute little app. It was too much to time block all that and still have my very specific little system. Did I know this going in? Yeah I had a hunch, but I just wanted to see.

Calendar Fail on Notion (Sort of)

So then yesterday I also decided I wanted to look into some new notion themes and I remembered that Notion would allow you to import your Google calendar. Well I already had the link in there but I thought it would be cool just to have the calendar on my first page (home page) to see what things are coming up and to be able to plan from there, and easily add appointment from there, etc. I was so excited.

I got the permissions set up and the calendar is there but you have to click a couple of buttons to make it open up. It won’t just display on the page itself. I tried embedding it, I watched YouTube videos, I gave it all kinds of permissions, and I followed all the instructions, but it still will not SHOW my calendar items on the Home Screen. It’s just a blank calendar until I click “manage calendar” and then it’ll take me to my calendar. Grrrrr. I stayed up until midnight thinking I could make it work. I even installed third party apps that said they were free til you got it set up and then they wanted to charge you. I could have thrown the computer out the window. But it didn’t work so I’m just going to have to go with having to press a button or two. At least it DID import but it’s just not doing what I want it to and what it shows everyone else’s calendar doing. Things like this make me feel so aggravated. Usually I can finally figure it out within 24 hours at least but that is not the case.

I AM itching though for a different NOTION experience. I have used the iOS Reminder app for all my lists and so now I’m actually using Notion a bit different from what I was. So I want to revamp it for my needs now. I want to be able to do a quick journal daily on it (for blog notes and my memories). The journal is set up but I want to redo my Home Screen so it houses everything with a quick click to where I need to go within notion. I use it for my weekly planning always, my goals are on there, thoughts, tracking, medical information (numbers like Blood Pressure, cholesterol, sugar, weight), recipes I want to fix. An information dump ground at times. It’s a brain dump, a mind map, and working data that I refer back to.

So I want to be working on that and am very excited to do that. I KNOW how to do that so it should be fairly easy. I will show you what it looks like when I’m finished. Then my next goal is to start working on cleaning up my office again and getting some of these notes and ideas typed up into Notion. I also need to do some filing.

So I finished the video today and it’s uploading into YouTube. I need to go feed the dogs as I think George is consumed in his music downstairs and has forgotten. He usually does the afternoons. So I’m gone. See you Saturday morning with the video link. I’ll not blog tomorrow as it’s the 4th and we have a party to go to and I am making a black eyed pea salad.

Ok over and out. Love you guys!