Category Archives: Beloved

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Winter travel

My daughter and I travel again this winter. We know it’s a crapshoot with the combination of Covid-19, influenza, RSV and weather. She flew from Denver to Seattle. I tested positive for Covid-19 two days before she arrived. Change of plans! A friend of hers picked her up and she stayed with them until I had finished the first five days of isolation. Then she came to my house and we both masked. I ate upstairs and she ate in the daylight basement.

We flew from Seattle a few days before Christmas. We were lucky enough to fly, since the plane the day before was cancelled and on the day after. We had a direct flight Seattle to Dulles. We had a lovely Christmas with my son and daughter-in-law.

We also got to visit with 4 over 80 year old family members once I tested negative for 48 hours. My two aunts and an uncle on my father’s side and a grandmother on their father’s side. I am so happy to have seen all of these elders! Not olders, they are not old until at least 90 and that may move back too!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: travel.

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This too two

This too two I want to remember.
Disagreeing. Respectful nearly always.
You say, “You argue with everything.”
“I think about both sides.” I say.
“And if I am alone I discuss both with myself.”
You roll your eyes and I grin and continue.
This too two I want to remember.

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Small cat

The kittens were new in 2021 and are so much bigger now. Elwha is the biggest cat I’ve ever had. Tiger face and shoulders. They were a bit malnourished when I got them and Elwha grow out rather than up at first. He was also very worried about food and ate very fast. It took a while for him to trust that more food would come. So far so good and he is much more mellow now.

And they both love to go outside on harness and leash. I have to take them one at a time, because I can’t effectively carry both if one of them freaks out. Elwha is much more likely to freak out than Sol Duc. The recycling truck is particularly scary. Also people, dogs and SUVs.

Early on, when everything was new, Elwha jumped into the bathtub and howled, because he landed in water. He had previously found it empty. I had to rescue him and he was very upset. He spent a full thirty minutes cleaning himself.

Very happy New Year’s Eve. Be careful out there and I hope the New Year brings joys. I am hoping that this will be our last really bad Covid-19 winter, though we may need to do yearly vaccines.

Here is a tea-cat, Hot Kitty, in a teapot that Helen Burling Ottaway made. She was my mother and the poem on the teapot is mine. You can read it here. We drank a lot of tea growing up.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: new.

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This too

This too I want to remember.
Discussions of the world together.
The mysteries of science and sweatpants strings.
String theory and medicine, cabbages and kings.
Why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.
This too I want to remember.

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hands together

These hands and the other hands that finished this difficult puzzle together on Christmas morning. We even found the missing piece, under my son’s pile of loot! We did start this one two days before Christmas. It’s a stinker.

These hands that make eggs benedict, and hug me, and hug each other. These are some of the things I adore, the owners of these hands.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: adore.