My Squirrels

I'm going to stop saying that I'm going to write more often. I have every intention of doing it, but time just goes by so fast! I had been meaning to write an update post about my new year's resolutions, but last weekend turned into a little bit of a nightmare, so I want to write about that.

First, you all know how I feel about my squirrels. I have a huge tree in my backyard right off of our back deck, and we've had about six squirrels at a time living in that tree for years. I've seen many generations of squirrels, and I love seeing the cycles--pregnant mom, then tiny babies. It's SO CUTE to see mom "training" her babies. From what I can tell, she makes them stay in a certain area on the tree and they watch her as she comes to the deck to get nuts from me. After about a year, the babies are brave enough to come up to me on their own.

It's hard to tell without a reference with a larger squirrel, but this is one of the babies when mom says it's okay to go play

One of the things I love most is that the squirrels trust me. It's very difficult and takes time to earn their trust, but eventually they recognize my voice and my hand signal that I have nuts for them. I keep peanuts (in the shell) out at all times, but for hand-feeding, I have walnuts, pecans, and hazelnuts (all in-shell), as well as shelled walnuts and pecans. Yes, they are spoiled!

Here is a short compilation video... (I hope this works--I feel like I don't even know how to compose a blog post anymore, hahaha)

I used to name them, but eventually it was hard to tell some of them apart, so I just started calling them all "Buddy". They frequently come up to the back door and look inside the kitchen to see if I'm around. Whenever I see them, I open the door and hand them a nut. It feels like passing out candy to trick-or-treaters! Whenever I cook dinner, they see me through the skylight in the kitchen and I can see them come down from the tree to the deck.

At least once or twice a day, I go outside with my "nut sack" (hahaha, I will never NOT laugh at that--it's a little bag I made to hold nuts). The squirrels sit on the railing (sometimes four of them at a time, which you can see in the video above) and I continuously hand out the shelled nuts. I watch them eat and then they reach their hands out for another. I love that they hold onto my fingers while they pick up the nut with their mouth. This time I spend outside is something that I look forward to every day; I go out there with no distractions and just interact with my beloved squirrels. It's therapeutic for me.

I know that to a lot of people, it seems ridiculous to love squirrels this much. But they bring me joy! Lately, I've had so much heavy stuff on my mind; feeding the squirrels is one of the only moments during the day where I can shut out the noise in my head and focus on the present.

Last Friday, it was *insanely* windy (not to mention cold). Well, Chick (my cat) hates storms and the wind was freaking him out. He was standing outside of Noah's door in the hallway and meowing loudly, so I started to walk over to him to comfort him. As I was walking past my dining room, I heard a loud crack from the backyard, and looked outside to see (what I thought was) a large branch coming off of my squirrel tree.

We've lost a branch here and there through the years, but this looked big. As I stood there, I saw the ENTIRE TREE tip over and uproot. This tree was massive! Maybe 80 feet tall? (I'm totally guessing). I just started yelling, "Holy shit, oh my god!" over and over again while I panicked a bit. Noah was the only one home and he was sleeping.

The view from my window 😞 

Where I like to sit and feed the squirrels

My first thought was my squirrels. I was so worried about them, and I knew that one of them had babies very recently. I immediately ran outside and started looking for the babies. I knew where all the hidey holes were, so I just went from one to the next, searching. I was about to give up when I heard a loud squeaking noise (it's a baby squirrel in distress cry) and I followed the noise. I saw a tiny baby underneath a huge branch and my heart sank. I thought the branch was pinning it down and I was so scared that I wouldn't be able to get it out.

Thankfully, I was able to reach under and grab it. I held it against my chest to warm it and he stopped his cry. I started looking for any siblings nearby and didn't see or hear any. At that moment, my next door neighbor came over and I told him what I was doing. He said, "Did you see the front of your house?"

I had run outside right after the tree fell, so I didn't know what he was talking about. He said that a utility pole fell on top of my garage, and the wires were hanging over our driveway. That was obviously a big deal, but my first priority was finding the squirrels. I went back to where I found the one baby and dug around inside the tree. Right as I was about to give up, I found another baby. I continued to look for babies and their mom. As I was doing that, a police officer or firefighter came into the backyard to tell me that he taped off the street in front of my house because of the power lines. I still hadn't even looked at it yet, so I went inside with the babies and put them inside of a winter hat to keep them warm, then I walked out to look at the garage.

Baby boys, a week and a half old

Sure enough, the utility pole had come down right on top of the garage and punctured a large hole in it. There was also a dead tree across the street that had fallen into the road, blocking the road off. My electricity went out, of course. And interestingly, my neighbors' still had power. It was just my house that lost power! Between the tree, the branch, and the electricity, it reminded me of the subreddit r/fuckyouinparticular, because nobody else in the neighborhood had damage.

I had no idea what to do about the squirrels. It was still crazy windy and cold outside, so even if mom came back for them, she had nowhere to put them, considering the tree was on the ground. With all that was going on, I called Jerry and ask if he could come home from work. He left work and when he got home, he said he called wildlife rehabs on his way home and lined something up for us. I was SO grateful! The woman from the rehab told us what to do--absolutely do not try to feed them or give them anything to drink, and it was absolutely crucial to keep them warm. She suggested putting one of those disposable handwarmers under a blanket. 

She said we could wait until morning when the wind died down and try to get the mom to come back by playing a loop of the baby squirrel in distress cry (I found it on a wildlife rehab site). If that didn't work within an hour or two, we could bring them to her.

Without electricity, it was SO COLD in the house that night. The thermostat said 51 degrees on that first night. I put the squirrels (still in the hat) into a small box with a handwarmer underneath them. I was worried about the cats finding them, so I slept with them right next to me. 

In the morning, it was still very cold, but I tried doing what the rehab woman suggested with the squirrel cries. There were no squirrels in sight, which was disheartening. I felt *horrible* about taking the babies from their mom, but I decided to bring them to the rehab. They were only about a week and a half old, so they needed to eat. The woman at the rehab was so kind and I felt very confident that the babies were in good hands with her. She texted later that night to say they were eating and doing well.

Jerry and I, on the other hand, were freezing. The thermostat got down to 45 degrees that second night! The energy company still hadn't come to fix the pole. On Sunday, I called my brother, Nathan, who is a lineman for the energy company and told him what was going on. He called his supervisor and after some digging around, it turned out that someone had marked the job as "complete" on Friday night. So they didn't even know that we still had no power!

On Sunday evening, they came out and restored power temporarily. They still had to replace the pole, but they at least got the wires back up out of the way. Jerry had to put a tarp over the hole in the garage roof. We were so excited to get warm and sleep in a warm bed! (Interestingly, we discovered that when a Tempurpedic mattress gets super cold, it becomes hard as a rock.) We contacted the insurance company about the wind damage, who sent an adjuster out a couple of days ago to assess. 

Once all the chaos was back in order, I kind of had a little breakdown. I am completely devastated about the tree. I'm sure the squirrels will probably still come around, but it's just not the same. I loved sitting out on the deck and watching the squirrels in the tree. It was also home to a lot of them. I can always plant another tree (and I will) but it'll be at least 15-20 years before it'll be big enough for squirrels to inhabit. And you all know how good I am at growing trees. 🙄 

For a few days, I didn't see a single squirrel at all. Today, there were three that kept coming up for nuts. Usually there are about six. I just feel like my spirit is crushed. I'd already been having a tough time mentally, but this was a huge blow. I'm not sure I did the right thing with the babies, but at least I know they are safe. I haven't seen their mom yet.

Anyway, that was quite the weekend. Right now, it's windy and snowing, and I just want the weather to warm-up!

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Goals for 2026

Hello, hello! I have been starting every post with "it's been so long", "time is flying", etc. So I won't go into that. (Maybe nobody is even still reading--but I am finally writing.)

As you know from the past, I *love* setting goals for the new year. January 1st always feels so refreshing and hopeful. Despite all of the stuff I've been dealing with for the last few years, I am still feeling hopeful that things will turn around if I just keep working at it.

This year, I haven't set the type of goals I used to in the past. It feels overwhelming to me to think of running a race again, or reaching my goal weight, or something that is very concrete--black or white. Either I do it or I don't. So, this year, I am changing that approach.

Instead, I want to focus on developing good habits. Notice I say "developing"; I am not aiming for perfection, but progress. I want to feel better at the end of this year than I do now, mentally and physically. So, I wrote a list of things I'd like to work on. I'm not referring to using a "habit tracker" because I don't expect to fulfill everything every day.

I'm sort of following the Atomic Habits guidelines--learning the habits I hope to develop while doing the minimum to start out. For example, instead of saying I'm going to read one book a month, my goal is to read two minutes a day. Some days I'll just do the minimum, some days I'll get engrossed in the book and read for a couple of hours. And yet other days, I am sure I won't read at all for one reason or another. Like I said, I'm not aiming for a "streak" of perfection. That has never gotten me very far in the past. I'm trying to get out of the habit of being an all-or-nothing thinker.

That said, my list is pretty long, much longer than previous years when I've chosen a few "big" goals. These are the things I'd like to work on:

*Eat whole foods. Limit sweets as much as possible. Eat lots of veggies.

*Drink a lot of water. I've gotten out of this habit and I feel chronically dehydrated.

*Walk or run around the block--at minimum--daily. It's only 0.4 mile around the block and when walking with Joey (who is super slow and has to stop and smell everything) it takes me about 10 minutes. (Joey does get walked more than this; Jerry and the kids take him as well.) Ideally, I'll add a block once a month. Adding a block only adds about 0.15 of a mile, so it's not doubling the distance each month--definitely doable.

*Use the mini trampoline/rebounder twice a week for two minutes each time. I can do this after my walk. It's been sitting in the garage, unused, for a long time and I'd like to give it some use. Again, I would ideally like to add time spent on it; but this will increase over the course of the year rather than trying to do something like 30 minutes at a time right away. (My legs would never hold up for this--I can't believe how hard of a workout it is!)

*Reply to texts within eight hours. I know this sounds odd, but I am TERRIBLE at replying to texts (and even worse with emails). It causes me a lot of stress when I don't reply in a timely manner because I feel really bad, but I am SO slow at texting that it takes forever to type it out. I usually read texts within an hour or two, and I plan to reply when I can take the time to type it out, but then I end up forgetting (or I reply in my head and later realize I never actually did it). I know I can use voice-to-text, but the mistakes and bad grammar drive me crazy--I end up proof reading and changing it and it takes just as long. So, I need to either not worry about voice texts people may have to decipher or I need to take the time to type out a reply as soon as I read it. I chose eight hours because it would definitely be an improvement as of right now.

*Try my best to work through my inbox of email. I literally have emails from two YEARS ago that I haven't yet replied to (when readers take the time to write me, I like to take the time to write back). The reason they sit in my inbox is because I want to write a thoughtful and personal reply, which takes some time, and I don't carve out time for this.

*Hopefully post on my blog more often, ideally once a week. Even if it's just a "Friday Night Photos" type post, with or without the actual photos, to write about my week. Those posts are valuable to me because it's a type of journal of what I've been up to, and I like to have those memories written down.

*Send one card, via snail mail, per month to a friend. Getting "real" mail is always so fun, so I'd like to hopefully make someone smile when they get something that isn't a bill or advertisement or political propaganda.

*Stick to a simple cleaning schedule. I've always just done chores that looked like needed to be done rather than a schedule to keep on top of everything. I didn't make the schedule too complicated, and it's already made a difference in how I feel. My biggest one is making sure the kitchen is clean before I go to bed--no pots soaking in the sink, crumbs on the counters, etc. It's nice to wake up to a clean kitchen.

*Write one line a day in my five-year journal. This can take me less than 30 seconds, very simple.

*A one hour time limit on Reddit. Reddit is the only form of social media that I use, and I really don't post much there; but I do go down rabbit holes of posts and threads that interest me. And I'll end up clicking to outside links to articles, getting lost in those. I think one hour a day is a good amount of time. Again, I'm hoping for progress, not perfection.

*Sit outside (or walk) and just appreciate nature for two minutes a day. My therapist offers "walk and talk" sessions at a park next to his office and before we walk, he always takes a moment to look around and just take it all in with gratitude. I'd like to start seeing the outdoors with more appreciation.

*Learn to meditate. My brain is ALWAYS working at 100 miles per hour and I would love to learn to turn off all the noise in my head, even if it's only for a couple of minutes a day. Nita Sweeney (the author of one of my favorite memoirs, "Depression Hates a Moving Target") so kindly sent me her book called "A Daily Dose of Now", which is made up of 365 mindfulness meditation exercises that are very short and simple. I've done several of them with the intention of doing them daily, but then I forget and months go by.

*Do daily stretching for my back. My back pain has gotten so much worse over the last few years and my muscles are constantly tight. Becky (my brother's ex-wife) used to work as a massage therapist and when I was at her house in November, she explained to me my problem areas and how to address them (in addition to suggesting I get regular deep-tissue massages). My doctor also ordered physical therapy and I haven't taken the time to set that up, so that is on my list as well.

*Go on a date with Jerry once a month. We've gotten into a comfortable routine at home, and I think it would be nice for us to do something different once in a while. We are going to take turns planning a date each month, even if it's as simple as going to the movies.

There are a few others, but I want to keep those private.

So, that's a long list! But aiming for progress and not perfection keeps it from being too overwhelming. Per the Atomic Habits book, aiming for just two minutes can make a big difference over the course of a year. And ideally, I'll increase the time/distance/pages read/number/etc over the year. For now, though, I am keeping it as simple as possible.

Since I haven't been blogging, I also got out of the habit of taking photos. So I have very little to share! 

Here are a couple of recent sewing projects:

This one is is a quilt (slightly modified) from a pattern called the "It's A Lot" quilt. And as you can see, it's perfectly named! There is a LOT going on here but that's what I love about it; it was far from boring to work on. I enjoy looking at it when I'm using it because all the different blocks are interesting, and I have memories associated with a lot of the blocks (maybe a particular podcast I was listening to while working on it, or a mistake I had to fix, etc.) I pieced the top of this by machine, except for the appliqué "petals" (which took forever) and I hand-quilted it. I've found I much prefer hand-quilting to machine quilting.

I'm in love with this hoodie! I didn't make the hoodie itself, but I did the reverse appliqué on the front and it was my first time trying this technique. Basically, you trace the pattern on the back of a large piece of fabric and sew it to the inside of the hoodie. You sew along the lines of what you've traced (from the inside) and then you turn it right side out and cut away all the bits around the pattern shapes you've sewn. I love it because you don't have to cut out shapes of fabric! You just snip away the pieces around the shapes.

This is a goofy picture of Riley that I took when I was visiting in Minnesota. I brought her and Luke each a silly eye mask (because they fly a lot). When you look at her, it's hard to remember that it's essentially a blindfold and she can't actually see out of it.

This has been my favorite lunch lately and it's so healthy! It's a lentil salad with red peppers, onions, cucumber, chopped almonds, celery, and raisins. The dressing is a simple vinaigrette. Here is the recipe if anyone is interested: "The Best Lentil Salad" from Detoxinista. I use beluga (black) lentils, which have become a favorite because they hold their shape when cooked and don't get mushy.

And that's all I've got! I am going to try very hard to post more frequently (ideally would be once a week, but even once a month would be progress). I always get SO nervous when I think about posting, but I feel really good about it afterward. Again, thank you for thinking of me and I am so sorry that I have been so absent. Therapy has been very helpful so far and I hope that as I continue to work on myself, I'll feel much better. I hope you are all doing well! Until next time... xo.

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