Lucille Archives - Sustainable Sue

Quick Sustainable Productivity PSA

I know some of you are planners like me. I want to give a quick little PSA about sustainable productivity as we head into the weekend. Let me share a little story about last weekend.

All I wanted to do was set up the tripod and try to capture a few good snaps of the hummingbirds that visit our feeder. I was the first one awake so it was deafeningly quiet. It was a little chilly so I put on my hoodie. It was day 93 in quarantine so naturally I went outside in my pajamas. I was ready for peace and quiet…

Let’s just say Lucille’s agenda was verrrrrrry different from mine. She wanted to play ALL OF THE FETCH.

If you zoom in you can see the muddy slobber on my pajama pants from where she insisted she return the ball to my lap.

I never really got a great shot of the hummingbirds, but it was fun to watch Lucille tear around the yard living her best life. She doesn’t know that “Hummingbird Photo” has been on my to do list for 3 years. What if we listen to Lucille’s Life Lesson and had such a blatant disregard for our to do lists that we just ran amok mindlessly in love with life?

Doesn’t that sound much better than the daily grind? Sure we all have adult responsibilities, but if something has been on your list for YEARS, is it really worth getting bent out of shape about? Let’s take a minute to consider this over the weekend. If you are brave enough – cross something off that list without doing it. “Delegate to the floor” as they say in corporate America.

If you are not sure what to delegate to the floor, I invite you to download the Sustainability Checklist to see if it might shake loose some ideas for you.

By Susan Sanders|2020-06-19T17:35:08-04:00June 19th, 2020|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Holy God I was emotional Sunday. At one point I was working on the online grocery order and about burst into tears. Not sure what was happening. Grocery prices weren’t that high.

I tried my usual cures – reading, crafting, getting shit done, cleaning, organizing. Zilch. I told Bixby to get his hiking shoes and the dog and we hit the trail. Five miles later I did not feel like ripping off my skin.

I think it was part endorphins from exercise. I think it was part Vitamin D from sunshine. I think it was part watching Lucille have the time of her life fetching sticks and swimming. All I know is it helped get my chi straight.

How do you pull yourself out of bad moods? What is your go to mood booster?

By Susan Sanders|2019-11-03T19:43:09-05:00November 4th, 2019|Health & Fitness, Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Training Tools

It is true I may never race again, but I am still in training. For afternoons in the garden. For hauling crap to the beach on vacation. For days of walking through the Olympic Forest on other vacations. For dog walks and fun with my nieces. For life.

These are some of the tools I use to help me stay mobile these days. Foam roller, stretch strap, and of course – Lucille.

By Susan Sanders|2019-06-07T12:42:31-04:00June 14th, 2019|Health & Fitness|0 Comments

Friends, you will remember that we have discussed the fact that I am a quitter. I have no shame in quitting a book that is not resonating with me. This is not to say that I want to ride unicorns and poop rainbows about all of the books I read. I may have a visceral reaction to a character or a theme or plot device – I am looking at you, We Need to Talk About Kevin. But sometimes that is the author’s purpose – to have that visceral response. To FEEL something. To REACT to something. Not to just passively read words and move onto the next.

I have recently starting reading a book by SARK, an author with the tag line: Creating a Beacon of Hope in a Chaotic World. And I believe books are that as well! They are our beacon of hope, but they do not all need to be finished. Some need to be beautiful and sit on our shelves and make us happy. Some may need to be finished, but not by us. Some need to be finished by us in another chapter of our lives – the book just got to us too soon.

I want to declare that books do not need to be finished to be of value. You can dip into this book, gobble it up, do all the things it suggests, explore every resource, game, and invention, or just lie quietly, smiling at the cover.
It will smile back.
S.A.R.K.

By Susan Sanders|2019-12-12T19:06:02-05:00June 12th, 2019|Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Remember how the deer ate my flowers? They definitely heard about my yard from the birds. Apparently, the word is out in the Nature-hood that my garden is THE place to be. A few years ago the birds started eating all of the blueberries off the bushes before I can get ANY! Well, NOT ANY MORE!!

muuuahahahaahhaha…….

MUUAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAH!!!!!!!!

Ahem. Anyway – I wanted some o’ dem berries. So I consulted my local garden expert, and her solution was a snake. I looked at her like she had 10 heads. Then she showed me the inflatable snakes she had in her fruit trees. I figured it was worth a try.

Available on Amazon – check! (and cheap – double check!)

Easily inflatable – check!

Helped The Boy and I conspire together to scare the crap out of The Girl – BONUS CHECK!

blow up snake in a tree — Sssssssssnake at work.

By Susan Sanders|2019-11-30T16:34:45-05:00June 4th, 2019|Environmental Surroundings|0 Comments

Garden Project – Irrigation

I have such great ideas. Then reality hits. This was a doozy, y’all. Like over ten months in the making doozy. It is like an episode of The Golden Girls when Sophia says, “Picture this! Sicily 1922...”

Last summer (and really every summer for the last 7 years or so) the garden has died because we don’t keep up with the watering. North Carolina is like the surface of the sun. Ironically it is swampy humid at times, yet the clay soil dries it out and cracks. Even cacti and succulents have died in the dried out clay in our yard. Welp, 2019 was going to be the year that I was going to change that!

It started as all things do – with a bright idea found on the internet. Homemade irrigation systems were WAY too expensive so I wanted to go the DIY route. Plus I fancy myself quite a DIY diva.

Step 1: Fall of 2018 I posted a notice that I was looking for janky hoses and social media came through!

Step 2: Put “Make drip irrigation with old hose” to my to do list and find a good website to give instructions.

Step 3: Wait for 8 months.

Step 4: Once weather turns crazy hot and I am tired of watering after 2 weeks, I try to drill holes whilst throwing the tennis ball for Lucille.

Step 5: Connect drip hose (the one with holes drilled in it) to the good hose connected to the spigot. We had to use a 2nd hose because the spigot is too far from away to connect directly.

Step 6: Weave hose through garden so holes are in general vicinity of where you have plants that you want to be watered.

Step 7: Watch the wheels fall off of the project. Cry.

The old hose I got through the Nextdoor app and left in a wad in the yard through the fall and winter and most of the spring somehow got kinks in it. Weird. When I turned the water on – nada aqua. And I could not unkink the hose because someone had drilled holes in it. More weird. Then Lucille kept running through the garden with her ball trying to get me to throw it while I was getting more and more frustrated by the second.

This is not where I cried – I was still staying calm at this point. I got out a new hose and started again with the hole drilling (whilst ball throwing – there are no photos of this because I was feeling much less amused by it). The more observant of you readers will notice at this point the color of the hose turns from red to green.

Progress was made as water flowed from the early hose holes. But stopped about half way through. I moved it around, found more kinks. Used pliers to unkink. Did not work. This is where tears came in. Over a hole hose project.

Let me tell you about the self-talk that was happening at this point. I was 100% convinced I was a worthless human being because I could not get this to work. I did not want to have to ask my husband to help like a helpless female. I wanted to conquer it, yet who was I kidding with this “I can do it” nonsense.

Let me tell you what an asshole that voice is. I cannot stand her!! These old tapes are exhausting. And I know I am not the only woman (person, probably but men don’t seem to suffer this like women do) who deals with this asshole in her head. We are better than this!

During this whole second hose debacle, Paul was sitting on the porch chilling, not offering notes from the peanut gallery. Basically doing his strong, silent type schtick. But this is why he is perfect for me. Right as I was about to move to Defcon 1 and start destroying things, he wandered out to the garden and introduced me to physics. Apparently we have an incline juuuuuust enough to stop the flow. He moved the hose around, yada yada yada VICTORY!

Each red circle is a spout where water spews from.

I waited a day to make sure it was going to work like I planned, then put the mulch down to cover the hose and hold in the moisture. And mulch makes stuff look so pretty.

What garden projects are on your to do list? What self-talk do you need to nip in the bud?

By Susan Sanders|2019-11-30T16:36:19-05:00June 1st, 2019|Environmental Surroundings, Mental Well-being|0 Comments

Oh, Deer.

As you well know, I am a Midwesterner married to a Southerner. He hunts, I pretend meat grows wrapped in cellophane in the case at Lowe’s Foods. So our whole married life I have made snide remarks to him and The Boy when they go out murdering Nature’s creatures. With the exception of one said creature. The one that does this to my flowers. All. Of. My. Flowers.

I want the deer that did this on a kabob.

I am not the best gardener so when I actually grow something in my yard the produces beautiful flowers, I want to enjoy them. If I choose to remove them, it will be to put them in a vase in my house to bring Nature inside. The damn deer seem to wait until the night before I plan to cut them for vases and boom – snack time. You would think that 80 pounds of Labrador Retriever would be a deterrent, but not so much.

Lucille chases deer in our backyard natural area most mornings, but she really only phones in her effort. It is not all out like she means it – not like it is when she is going after a tennis ball fiercely. Our guess is that she is half assing it because she does not know what to do when she catches the deer. This only happened once. She was chasing a deer at early o’clock, caught up to the deer and sort of bonked her head against it, stopping cold, looking around. It was like time stood still. Like when that hottie says yes to a date. Like when your mom says yes to candy before dinner. You have no follow up response, because you thought the answer was no.

Then Lucille turned around and ran back to the house. Ever since then, the deer come over every night for midnight snacks.

By Susan Sanders|2019-11-30T16:37:22-05:00May 25th, 2019|Environmental Surroundings, Mental Well-being|0 Comments