I am supposed to write about envy
but what I am feeling is grief
I walked five miles yesterday
and it was fun, talking, a group
but then a nap from 2 to 5, three hours
and to bed at seven pm and up at five
so 13 hours sleep in response to exercise
It is time to downsize what I think I can do
I still have my mind, but the energy is halved
I can’t work full time as a physician
and I am not sure I can work half time
Do I try it? The risk that I crash again?
Pneumonia and death? Or do I curl into the grief
and find something else to do.
Even the thought makes me tired.
Not envy of other doctors, oh, maybe a little
but the truth is, my survival to date is something
of a miracle. Babies with mothers with active tuberculosis
usually die very quickly, infected, overshelmed.
My mother kindly coughed blood so the doctors knew
before I was born, from the protection of the womb
to the protection of the family, away from my mother.
She is dead, my father is dead, my sister is dead
so even if I cannot work half time
it’s still miraculous to be here at all.
I hope that each and every one of you
feels the miracle of not being dead and gone
some days. And that you do not envy
your dead.
Martin Luther King’s birthday and a federal holiday. To be blunt, we need to stop killing each other and hating each other. And an awful lot of hate is based on fear: fear of others, fear of losing money or status or standing.
The photograph is from September 2022, from my road trip with my friend Maline Robinson. She is second from the right in the photograph. We visited her in-laws in Beloit, Wisconsin on a road trip, going to visit her old friends and family. Her husband George Harrell had died of lung cancer in 2015. Maline died in February 2023.
I am the short one, in the skirt.
Let peace and love spread over the world, justice and an end to discrimination.
Here is my first try at Judy’s numbers game. The number is 125. I got over 300 photographs with that entry, so that’s a bit many to post. Many are of birds or our beautiful Salish Sea. And bowling, heh.
The first is from December 2018, of the ferry from Port Townsend to Whidby Island at sunrise.
Reflections off of North Beach. A storm was rolling in, but the sun was still lighting the clouds, which in turn lit the water. December 2018.
My cousins sent me a packet of letters. Some are from my mother to her mother, but this one is from… well, see if you can guess.
Dear Mother and Father,
We got in the car and Grandfather and me sat in front and Grandmother sat in back. Grandmother said, “Do you want your window closed?” and I said, “No.” Then, in a few minutes after that I said, “I am getting kind of chilly.” Then in a few minutes after that I tumbled over the back of the seat into the back seat. Then I shot my pistol out the window and tried shutting it again but it wouldn’t go. Then I waited awhile and then I shot off my pistol again and it worked. Then I shot off my pistol again in a few minutes after that but somehow it didn’t work. And then after awhile it started raining.
Then we got home. After a little while Eva May came over. Then after awhile Jimmie came. Jimmie brought over his gun with him. He had a long gun.
After supper I took my sparklers over to Jimmy’s and Eva May’s house. They invited me over before supper and then I started lighting my sparklers. I lit one after another and in a few minutes I said, “I’ll go over and get my pistol,” so I did.Then I went back for awhile and then I came home and stayed and we had the rest of my sparklers in the house. And then we all went to bed pretty early.
This is postmarked July 6, 1932 Decorah, Iowa. It cost .03 cents in stamps to mail. It was sent to Mrs. Temple Burling, 3434 Arden Ave, Hollywood, Illinois. The handwriting is quite beautiful. The letter is signed “Bobby” in quite different handwriting. The letter was sent from “Bobby” — Robbins Burling, age 6,as the narrator, with one of his grandparents transcribing to his mother (my grandmother) Mrs. Temple Burling (Katherine White Burling). I think it is a charming letter and so like a kid, with the repeats: “and then in awhile”. I am going to send it to “Bobby’s” grandson, who now has a child of his own. Here is the rest:
In the morning I got up and got dressed. Before I got up I was real quiet because I thought they were asleep because they were so quiet and they thought I was asleep because I was so quiet. Then finally they came past the door and when I knew – it they were awake – and they knew it – I was awake. And then I got up and got dressed.
Then after breakfast Grandmother and me went out and weeded. In a few minutes I said, “I’ll get the hay off the lawn for you.” so I did. I told her if she thought it was worth a penny and Grandma said, “Yes.” And then I said, “Do you think it’s worth any more than a penny?” and Grandma said “Yes.” In a few minutes we came in and she gave me a cent.
I left the penny in my hand and Jimmie came over and called me and we decided that we would make giant fingers and then as we were making giant fingers we decided we would make funny masks but we didn’t. We decided to make Chinamen’s hats but we didn’t.
Jimmie wore his hat in a funny pointed way and I wore mine with a round hole in the middle and kind of crooked too. And we went out to scare the girls and at first we didn’t scare girls but we scared Jimmie’s mother and we didn’t scare the girls after all. He went out to scare a man and he told me he’d be back and I got an idea while he was gone but he didn’t appear.
And then we went out and did some errands – got some peanut butter and then went to the library to see if they had any Dr. Doolittle books and they did. At first they asked if we’d read Dr. Doolittle at the Circus and I said, “I have.” and they put that back and looked some more and found another and asked me about that and it was called Dr. Doolittle and the Movie. Then at night Grandma read me some. We read part of it while I was in bed and then I started talking to Sixen and fell asleep finally and work up next morning. Then we had breakfast and I raked some more and I got another penny.
The hummingbirds were very hungry in yesterday’s 17 degree weather. At first Front Anna looked disheveled and fluffed up and miserable, but she cheered up considerably after breakfast. I filled my squirrel chewed bird feeders too. I put a warm scarf on each of my desks in front and we had a nice day of cat tv. My house was built in 1930 and it is not well insulated. Usually it’s not bad, just cooler upstairs, but in this cold it comes through all the walls and windows, storms or not.
But the cats watched the feeder tv quite happily. I took them out in harnesses and they decided to come back in quite soon. I don’t think they minded the snow, but they did not like the cold at all.
We are having our first real cold snap, with snow and lots of accidents two evenings ago. We have Anna’s hummingbirds, who can over winter. By yesterday morning, the temperature had dropped to 17 degrees F. Both of my hummingbird feeders were frozen.
I went out to wrap a hot towel around one. The front-of-the-house Anna’s buzzed me, inches from my face, to let me know she is HUNGRY and the food IS NOT AVAILABLE. The hot towel didn’t work, so I took the feeder in for a bit. She didn’t like that at all.
This looks pretty silly, but success!
The tiny feeder is one to hold in my hand. I have three, so I rotated them during the day to keep thawed food. Anna Front still spent energy chasing other hummingbirds away. She doesn’t look too upset, does she?
Anna’s hummingbird guarding her feeder and grooming in a rhododendron
The photos and video were taken through my window from my desk.
“The USBG’s presentย conservatoryย is a two-part building. The front is a one-story limestone structure with 11 lofty arches inspired by the seventeen-century orangery at Versailles near Paris. The facade features four alternating keystones carved in the images of Pan, Pomona, Triton and Flora. At the rear is a glass and aluminum greenhouse conceived in the glass house tradition first seen in the 1850s Crystal Palace in London.”
This is either Pan or Triton. I only took photographs of three of the four: two female and one male. He looks pretty wicked, so I would guess Pan. Triton had a reputation for being grumpy too, disappointed in love.
This is the model of the US Botanic Garden Building. You can see the faces over each arch.
Here is the other side of the building.
And here is the view of the Capitol from the desert room.
In theory Elwha is not allowed on my desk. But you can see that I’ve given in and he can use my scarf for naps when I am not using it. Sol Duc very rarely gets on the kitchen table, but Elwha won’t stay off it, especially if we have visitors. He would like to lie in the middle of the table and be admired and patted by everyone all at once. Sol Duc stays on another floor often, but sometimes she decides a visitor is interesting and she shows up. Not on the table though.
I’ve given in on the desk. But NOT the kitchen table.
With Cee’s Flower of the Day on hiatus, I am casting around. Here, a weekly prompt: divorce.
My ex and I did a year of couples counseling and then another year of hammering out the details. I felt like a terrible failure and did simultaneous solo counseling to figure out why I was failing. It took me two years to make the decision and I was anxious the entire time. And then once I decided, the anxiety evaporated like morning mist.
One thing that I realized is that we each had a blind spot. I love working and am a hard worker and even to the point of working until I get sick. My ex did not want to work, partly because his father seemed to hate it so much. My ex was dedicated to doing something fun every day and that was a revelation to me: were we allowed to have fun? So it was all lots of fun for a decade. He was in charge of play: bicycling, swing dance, going to music, golf (golf did not take with me), tennis. I was in charge of work and practical things. This started to fall apart with kids, because I wanted to have fun with the kids and he said, “Kids aren’t fun.” As I moved into defining fun, he refused to move into work.
At some point during the prolonged divorce process, I realized that some of it was not about me at all. He knew at some level that he had to go work, because his son was reaching his teens. My ex looked at me one day and said, “I’m going to have to thank you for this, aren’t I?” “Damn straight,” I replied. I wished he could deal with the work thing in the marriage, but he couldn’t. He went off and went to nursing school and has an RN. I talked to him yesterday on the phone. He said, “I decided when I was young that I was going to do tons outdoors until I got old and then I would work. And look how it’s working out!” A little hard on me, I think. Meanwhile the kids got bored with the whole thing so they were reassured that it was not about them.
Anyhow, I think it was the right thing to do though difficult. During one argument my ex said, “I have avoided doing anything hard.” I was annoyed and said, “What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?” “Marry YOU.” That made me laugh: a perfect snappy comeback and probably true.
This is The Yes Yes Boys, doing Make it Easy. I bought the CD when they played live at the Upstage here. I love this song. It’s not on You tube, but you can download the music for free here: https://hobemianrecords.com/product/why-say-no/.
“If you still can’t make it easy, get you a job and go to work Don’t be hanging round here and there, miss your meals, wear a raggedy shirt Cause when you’re missing your meals and you’re missing your bed That’ll give you the pneumonia that will kill you dead If you can’t make it easy, get you a job and go to work“
The plaque for this pollinator, the yucca moth, says that it and the yucca plant have evolved to be dependent on each other. Dependent sounds a bit worrisome. If I reframe it as teamwork, all of a sudden it sounds much better! And this is intentional pollination, which the author says is rare.
This is from the Holiday Exhibit, complete with train, at the US Botanic Gardens.
Does dependent sound more worrisome than teamwork? If so, why?
Discover and re-discover Mexicoโs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - Flรผchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflรผchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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