Happy Saturday friends!
Tomorrow is my 57th birthday, although in reality I'm only 27 :-) What age are you? Back in my 20s my family was at my grandparent's house, Mom's parents. We were getting ready to go out for dinner or something and Grandma and I were in the bathroom, putting last touches on our beautiful selves. She was in her 70s. I looked at us in the mirror, her 50 years older than I was and said, "How old do you think you are on the inside?" And quick as a bunny she said, "18." It was one of those important moments in my life—no one is who they look like on the outside. Mom always thought she was in her mid 30s. Ask your elders and find out how old they are :-)
And now, at 57? I'm 27. I've been 27 for a long time. It was the year I started whitewater kayaking and I started remembering who I was:
Ever since Mom crossed in 2022, this time of year feels a little bit like molasses. That was the last birthday of mine that she attended and just barely. Things started going downhill more quickly and she wasn't even able to have a birthday party for her September 12th birthday or her sister's (Aunt Katy) September 14th birthday. This is the time of year that the tears come quickly when I see a photo or video of her. Speaking of:
She's be annoyed at me for posting pics of her with messy hair, no makeup, and jammies but these are the pics that make me cry when I see them. This is her, loving her only grandchild SO MUCH.
I will come out of it, I always do, but there are lots of big feelings right now. I think about how much she would have loved what I'm doing in the farm gardens. She's where I got that passion from. I know she's near and giving me little tidbits of advice when I have questions. Sometimes gardening knowledge just pops into my head, and I know it's not mine, it just arrives.
This year for Mom's birthday, I'm going to a little event at a farm down the street in New Hill. The guy's name is Rick Lawless and he's a certified permaculture design consultant. He's going to teach about slowing and trapping rainwater and reducing evaporation. Should be fun and I know Mom will be joining me :-) she would have loved learning about that kind of stuff.
I was talking to ManChild last week when we were headed out to go see The End of Oak Street. I said I wanted to get popcorn and candy and asked if he did too. He's trying to be good with that kind of thing so I said let's split a Peanut M&Ms. He said he liked Plain. That's when it hit me, I used to as well. But Mom liked Peanut best :-) So now I do too. I told him, "Someday, a million years from now, when you're older, I bet you switch too, just from remembering that I loved them because Mom loved them." Of course tears sprang to my eyes because, that's mid-August for me!
And wow, that movie. I'm still trying to figure out why it got such good ratings, it was ridiculous and not in a good way. Darn, I thought it was going to be fun and instead ManChild and I were trying not to snort soda out our nose.
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Goodness gracious, I've been spending time in the Matrix for several weeks and I need all these things:
Arrrrggggghhhhhh!!! Where are my watercolors? Where is my garden? I need my herd!
I do have to say though, I'm pretty proud of myself! I was often confused, but I just kept plugging along, sending screenshots to Cowork and the words, "Break this down into baby steps."
My entire blog is here now, well it's in the drafts folder anyway. But it's on this site so that's huge since my old platform (Kajabi) didn't allow you to export it. That's a fun way to keep you on their extremely expensive platform forever. Especially if you write a lot. I had almost 400 posts being held hostage!
I know, I know, I'm contributing to the downfall of the planet to save my work:
I had been using Kajabi with the intention that I would create an online library of art classes. Wouldn't that have been great! It's been SIX YEARS you guys...😳🙄 So this was the year to move. I started the basics back in March but the thought of having to manually copy all my blogs over was daunting and made me want to cry and then business picked up and I stopped dealing with it.
Strangely, the whole problem didn't just disappear...
Enter AI. I've been using, first ChatGPT and now Claude, for about 18 months. The business was not looking good when I started and I was wondering if we needed to give up the farm and go back to suburbia.
Brad told me about ChatGPT and I, as always, was hesitant. He's an early adopter of all tech and often drags me kicking and screaming out of the garden and away from horses and art, and into that world ;-) We downloaded the app and played around. Huh. In a very short amount of time I was using it as a way to organize my ADHD squirrel brain. I would stream-of-consciousness type or speak into it and it would give me back my thoughts in an organized format that I could use to move forward.
What a gift.
I always say, I didn't and don't use it with my art or writing, it's me doing that because it's who and what I am. But as a small business owner, it's useful for all kinds of other stuff. Like Claude wrote me a little script to resize all my photos I use in my blog each week. In the past, it would take me 45-90 minutes to resize my weekly pile. Now, I take my photos and put them in a special folder on my desktop and copy this little piece of code into my computer and, ta-da! Two seconds and the whole thing is done! So much time saved! Have I taken a job away from someone? No, I would never have outsourced it. I would have just kept plugging along and doing it myself.
Recently my friend Sara introduced me to Claude Cowork. I had told her that Claude couldn't get my blog posts off Kajabi. She was running Cowork and asked, and it said it could indeed do that for me.
Oh. My. Gawd. Do tell.
Anthropic's Claude is a chat assistant, where you can type or talk back and forth (you get more thorough answers if you type it seems). Anthropic's Cowork is a desktop app built for handing off bigger, multi-step jobs, like migrating a blog :-) And then there's Anthropic's Claude Code, similar to Cowork but built for programmers.
I have been working with Cowork and it has scrubbed all 400 of my blog posts off Kajabi, my 7,500 photos, watermarked only the ones that were mine, and put them all back together again in the correct format so they could be on this site. Have I taken a job away from someone? Still no, I thought about outsourcing it, but it was too hard to explain what needed to be done and I had resigned myself to the horrible yearly payment instead.
As a small business, where I wear ALL the hats (equine partnered coach, reiki master, neurofeedback practitioner, women's circle facilitator, artist, teacher, marketing pro, social media pro, writer, youtube pro, bookkeeper, IT and web admin, photographer, videographer, brand strategist, farmer/livestock manager, equipment operator, garden designer/head (only) gardener, event planner, plus mom and wife), to have this giant, horrible, expensive project hovering over me was, well, stressful. I am beyond thrilled that it was taken off my plate!
So that's really what this tech as been for me. Not doing the work instead of me, but doing the parts that were making me cry and standing between me and getting my work done. I'm thankful.
•••
THE RANCH
I can't even with this precious little peanut. My brother got so lucky with Princess Penelope!
I mean, come on, isn't this the most exciting, full, garden bed you've ever seen?? Ugh. Darn it. I managed to get 2 canna, 2 crested mountain mint, and 5 Blue Fortune Agastache in, while drinking my weight in electrolyte water before giving up. But this week will be in the 80s!
But look how full the bed I planted in the spring is getting:
In the jungle of house plants that is my front porch, my two monsteras continue to grow like crazy things, how fabulous. I love watching the new leaves unfurl:
Latest YouTube videos:
Why, why can I put up with animals chewing but not people?
I caught a squirrel eating a fig in our fig tree!
And a deer swimming in the pond!
And got a message from a dragonfly :-)
•••
HOW TO WORK WITH ME
Equine Partnered Coaching! With horses (early morning appointments in the summer), without horses, or online, your choice.
Neurofeedback Train your brain to calm and ease. The most common response I hear about neurofeedback is, "I'm so much less reactive in my life!" It really does smooth out the sharp spikes. Super helpful if your world feels harsh and spiky right now. These appointments are in my climate controlled office.
Reiki Another way to facilitate relaxation, calm, healing. If the weather is nice, you can choose outside in the herd (this is an early morning appointment) and of course in my office is always available :-)
And Women's Circles! I've updated my website yet again so read up and then contact me if you want to talk about joining a Women's Circle!
Wednesday Women's Circle has a waiting list, I will add you to it if you'd like. Newer people do indeed get in occasionally, as sometimes the people higher on the list end up with upcoming vacations, too busy at work, or just life is life-ing.
Tuesday Women's Circle, runs 11am—1pm, contact me if you're interested in the next group, it starts in September.
Monday online art class via Zoom. Ongoing, every Monday, 7:30-9pmET. $35 There isn't a public link for this one but you can contact me for the supply list and link here. I teach you something fun in watercolor or mixed media. It's a low key, jammies kind of class. Right now it's small so you get more one on one instruction if you want it.
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Hope you all have a great week!
Thank you for reading :-)
All of my art and writing is made with human intelligence!
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