Author Archives

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Wild

I keep wondering at the stubborn part of me that will not let go.
 That wants to reconcile with all, no matter what they’ve done.
 I go inside, deep and deeper, in the depths all is slow.
 That part is the holy part that longs for the One.
 I have been told to let go of things, forget, no more longing.
 But the longing is a sacred place, a longing for the Beloved.
 I think that excising it would be a horrid evil wronging.
 Handle gently, with care, with love, and gently gloved.
 I meet someone who says, “You are very in touch with your inner child.”
 I know it’s not a compliment, I smile and pay little mind.
 My Child is my connection to the Beloved, fierce and mild.
 Jealous judging rolls right off, people can be unkind.
 I won’t excise the holy core, the Beloved inner child.
 I feel the Beloved’s laughing play and joy, heart running wild.

_________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: realize.

https://www.playingforchange.com/videos/words-of-wonder-get-up-stand-up-song-around-the-world

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Silhouettes

I went to the store last weekend to get things like soap and a travel iron. I looked for pens too. I love colored ink pens for my journal. The pens and back to school things are right by the kids’ section. I bought an inexpensive kit. It is a sun print kit. It contains treated paper and plastic silhouette cutouts. I choose the cutouts and put them on the paper, put plastic on top to hold it, and expose it to the sun for 10-15 minutes. Rinse, dry, and voila!

The lower creature is from cutouts. The other I found cleaning the house: I thought it was a deceased large cricket, but no, it’s a praying mantis. I think praying mantis are wonderful creatures. I do not know if Sol Duc brought it in or it wandered in to the house on it’s own. At any rate, I am honoring it’s memory with this silhouette. I am also eyeing other small household objects and thinking about what would expose well. My grandmother’s ring, with a moss agate, that might let light through on to the paper. Paperclips, earrings, flowers, grasses. This paper is quite fun. I will use it as stationary and get to share it!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: butterflies.

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There must be

There must be a bell here somewhere. I am sure of it! This is Cinque Terre, taken when my daughter and I were hiking last September. It was a beautiful and fabulous day! We hiked the trail for three towns and that was enough. I thought my legs might fall off.

And the water! Gorgeous.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bell.

Keb’ Mo’, sing it and ring it!

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All of my patients are smart 3

Human behavior doesn’t surprise me, really. Sometimes it disappoints, depresses, demeans, dispirits and demoralizes. And it’s not the patients. It is the corporate workplace and how it abuses people. And circles the wagons against a threat. Including against employees that it views as threats.

I think all of my patients are smart. “You got this,” I say. I explain what carbohydrates are and that they are in everything, practically, except meat and oil. And some meats have carbohydrates too: shrimp, for example. But my patients can figure this out! My patients rise to the occasion! I am not saying that they do smart things all the time. No one does, including me. Even the smartest ones can do things that are not a good idea or are a really bad idea. Growing up in an addiction household, I think I escaped addiction mostly because I had decided that no adults could be trusted by the time I was three. I thought they loved me but I couldn’t trust them not to give me to someone else. Ironic, that the distrust saved me from taking the same path. My sister took it and is gone. My patients are smart and all I have to do is share my education and experience! They take the ball and run with it! Not all. Sometimes it’s too late and everyone dies eventually.

Corporations, on the other hand, are infuriatingly stupid.

The photograph is me in 2015, sailing my father’s boat with my daughter, in Port Townsend Bay.

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Something

Something is happening all around me
Something unpleasant is creeping around
I trust that feeling, that core that is free
I go quiet and listen, I will stand my ground
I am told no problem, this is routine
Nothing to worry about, averting their eyes
Lay down and be walked on, take it for the team
Blind-sided, I walk through a jungle of lies.
I walk very slowly then take to the trees.
I swing on a vine past the river of tears.
Wave to the gators with teeth to eat me,
Routine bad treatment not surprising nor feared.
In the treetops I sing to the stars quite alone
I am happy and making my quiet way home.

Suddenly I am thinking about home. Travel does that sometimes.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: travel.

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Fit, function and frustration

The clinic that I have been in now since a week or two in July is an older clinic. It does not have wall mounted computers in each room and in fact, there is no desk at all in the exam rooms. As the temp, the other two doctors have priority over me in picking their rooms. I do not like the exam table in one room. It isn’t a regular exam table. It turns out to be a table for a DO to do adjustments. I am an MD, not a DO. The table might get switched out but it has not been yet.

Meanwhile the desk. We have laptops that plug into the desktop in the offices that we each share with a medical assistant. The desktops have a standard keyboard. The laptops are small, and my laptop that I am typing on now is in between the two. At first my fingers had trouble switching between three different keyboard sizes. Now it is pretty automatic.

So, no desk in the exam room. I do most of my note in the room and don’t dictate. I type reasonably fast. But I hate a laptop on my lap and anyhow, we are all sitting too much, so I stole one of the two Mayo trays from the procedure room. Mayo trays have adjustable height, are stainless steel so they can be cleaned after surgery, and they are a pretty good desk for a laptop. I choose to stand while typing in room one.

Next it turns out to be inconvenient to drag the Mayo tray back and forth from room one to room two. I am leaving it in room one. Room two has a standard exam table, so I pull out the “pull out leg rest” (yes, I looked up the name), push the step in and then I can sit on my stool and use the “pull out leg rest” as a desk.

The medical assistants have adjusted, mostly. The patients blink at first, but they seem fine with it. Sometimes I am attempting to find something and also attempting not to curse this particular electronic medical record. The other day I needed an ankle-brachial index test. Ok, not under ABI. Two were under ankle-brachial index. I chose the one that was not in our clinic, since we don’t do them. I got a message back that that was wrong. I chased the other doctor down. She called a third provider who remembered. The one I need is under “us ankle-brachial index”. Really? Hopefully I will remember that annoying local electronic medical record filing quirk, but I may not. If you are wondering what it is, it is a test for arterial disease in the legs, comparing blood pressure in arteries in the legs with the arms. The “us” stands for ultrasound.

The photograph is Elwha supervising on my desk at home.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: desk.

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Last on the card: hot

The cover picture is from the hike with my daughter at Beaver Creek, last on my Panasonic.

This is from my cell phone and cracked me up. 19 Crimes and Martha Stewart?

And for our song track, we’ll have another Martha: Martha and the Vandellas, from 1963. Fabulous!

For Brian’s Last on the Card.