Category Archives: Beloved

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fossil snail

Fossil snail. I found this on one of the Olympic Peninsula beaches. It’s gender is also pretty mysterious, at least to me. I think it’s too late for DNA testing.

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myalgic encephalopathy

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, actually. I put encephalopathy on the Ragtag Daily Prompt, but …. my brain is still a bit fuxxy. Yeah, tried to type fuzzy. It’s sometimes annoying and sometimes funny. I have a little trouble with my balance, as if my proprioception is not quite working right. I have not fallen, but that is really my dance chops. All those years jitterbug dancing, I recover my balance very well. However, I am staying off of ladders for now.

The antibodies are annoying. The dopamine ones are down a little, which is a relief. I still spent 20 minutes this am organizing CDs into categories. This satisfies both the ADHD and the OCD bugs. I have four categories: women musicians, rock and blues, classical/ethnic and local/folk. Sometimes I don’t know where the hell to put a CD. Southern Culture on the Skids… hmm. Harry Connick jr…. double hmmm. I now have a pile of movie soundtracks and a pile of DUNNO. I have picked up CDs at garage sales when they are a dollar each. Random. Those are in a separate “listen to it and decide” pile. They could end up in the library box outside if I dislike them enough. There seems to be some rap, I don’t have tons of that. Punk, now, it gets filed with the rock except when it’s more Americana…..

I can lower the antibody levels with a hot bath. Tend to wait until I really have to eat, eat, then with the antibodies start poking me I have the hot bath. A sauna would help as would a hot tub. Dang. Where is my hot tub? I hurt a lot more if I eat gluten or get my blood sugar high. Sugar is bad. Rice is pretty ok, though muscles hurt afterwards. I’ve long since trashed my glycogen stores, so my blood sugar will drop back to ketosis within 2 hours instead of taking 2-3 days. Feels terrible while it is happening. I get really cold and achy and just feel like I am dying. Lie down, wrap up in a really warm pile of blankets. I feel the shift: lights get brighter, sound gets louder and the pain switches off. Then I get too hot and throw off the blankets and have some energy again. I still have to behave: any little thing like starting to trot up the stairs and OW, my chest starts hurting and I get short of breath. I am a little short of breath just being vertical. I am glad I am not bad enough to have to just lie in bed, that would fungking suck.

Hope you are well. Get the covid vaccine: it may well make you feel rotten, but covid 19 does the same thing only more so. I think that if I got covid 19 I would croak.

Ribbit.

Peace be with you.

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Pandas and the toughest yarn

After my sister died, I eventually got a box from her home.

People were cleaning it out. My cousin Ko, my friend Caroline, other friends.

Among other things, they sent part of her yarn stash.

What they sent me was the very very fine yarn and the fuzzy yarn. The mohair.

Oh gosh, I thought, they sent me the toughest yarn.

Well, as part of the dealing with the ADHD/OCD antibody annoyance, which makes me wired while the OTHER antibodies make me physically not able to do much, what am I doing?

Sorting my yarn stash, for one. I have a LOT of that lovely fuzzy soft superfine mohair and other superfine yarns. It is tricky to work with because the fine needles are hard on the hands and because if you screw up, it’s hard to take it out. I know some of the tricks: freezing the sweater is one. It makes it easier for the fibers to untangle.

I’ve also been sorting the knitting books and magazines. I have more books. My mother gave me a whole hardcover book on edges and casting on. I’ve used it twice so far. But now I am home, buzzing with antibodies (yeah, sometimes it feels like ants or bees or pins. On the inside.) and so: knit.

And lo, I find this book. Fine knitting. It even has a mohair t-shirt pattern! Awesome, I am going to be knitting up some of my sister’s mohair. Wonderful. I think she’d approve. Also, I plan to be just as glam and sultry as the woman on the cover, heh.

I think I’ll submit this to the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Country Comfort.

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Bad Pig

This is Bad Pig. She is helping with the computer.

Bad Pig was born, or made, in 1982 or 1983. I made her in college. She is constructed of a coat hanger, a cardboard tube and some stuffing and then I found fabric to cover her. I used post earrings for eyes, because that is what I had on hand. They are rather nice earrings. Her tail curls around so that she can sit on your shoulder like Anne McCaffrey’s fire lizards. I made her for a convention of some sort. Fantasy, I think.

Anyhow, I gave Bad Pig to my sister Chris. She was not named Bad Pig at that time. I don’t know what Chris named her. But she continued with Chris through multiple moves. When my sister was in hospice, I asked if I could take Bad Pig back home with me. Chris said yes. Later Chris asked me to keep the bad pigs from harming anyone else. I was not exactly sure what she meant, but I said yes.

On the way home, I named the dragon Bad Pig and explained that I didn’t want her to harm anyone. Let the past be the past and bygones be bygones. I am not sure exactly what the details of Bad Pigdom were, but it’s the future I am concerned with.

Bad Pig has been in the living room on the book shelf since coming back to Washington. Currently she is helping out with the computer. I tell her when the computer is considering being unhelpful and Bad Pig then considers breathing fire on it. However, the computer straightens up at that point, so she doesn’t have to.

My sister was born in the Chinese year of the dragon. In hospice she said, “How will I find you?”

I said, “You are a dragon. You are letting me take the dragon I made you home. You will be able to fly. All you have to do is find the dragon and you will find me.”

So it is very comforting to have her so close.

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My father’s mother’s father

The eldest gentleman in this picture is Fred Bayers, my father’s mother’s father. And his family.

My father’s mother’s mother is present as well. Let me not overlook the women.
Gertrude Bayers.

My father is there and his two sisters. Their spouses and children are present.

My mother is there. My father’s mother and my grandfather and my grandmother’s siblings are present.

I am there. So is my little sister.

Look at all the love there. We need our families so much during this pandemic.

Sending love out.

All love comes back to me.

I hope it comes back to you too.

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The Brewer’s Big Horses

This is one of the Songs to Raise Girls, songs that I learned before Kindergarten. A very weird list of songs.

This song comes from my maternal grandfather. My mother said that it was a Congregationalist temperance song….

The photograph is Morris D. Temple and his grandson, F. Temple Burling. F. Temple Burling is my maternal grandfather. I am related to Temple Pumps. According to my mother’s stories, Morris Temple was more interested in Japanese art than in Temple Pumps and the company eventually folded. I don’t know if that is true, or if it was a different Temple then Morris. However, my middle name is Temple.

This song is one that I don’t have memorized, though I know the tune. I have my mother’s handwritten lyrics, with her drawings framing it. There is a tape of my grandfather singing it in the Library of Congress, according to my mother. I would like to go listen to it some time.

I’ve copied it just how my mother wrote it out. There might be an issue about political correctness, but I have a picture of Morris Temple in the 1860s, in his civil war uniform, with a sword. You will have to wait for that post to see which side he fought for….. I presume that my mother wrote it down as she was taught it. I am not sure who talked like this in Iowa in the 1880s, but maybe it was most people.

The Brewers’ Big Horses

O, the brewer’s big horses, comin’ down de road
A totin’ along old Lucifer’s load
Dey step so high and dey step so free
But them big horses can’t run over me

Chorus:
O no! boys O no!
De turnpike’s free where ever I go
I’m a temperance ingine don’t you see
So them big horses can’t run ovah me
Repeat with “toot toot toots”

O de liquo’ men been actin lak de own de place
A livin’ off de sweat o’ de po’ man’s face
Dey’s fat and sassy as dey can be
But deir big horses can’t run ovah me

Chorus

I’ll harness dem horses to de temperance cart
I’ll hit ’em with the gad fo’ to give ’em a start
I’ll teach ’em how fo’ to haw an’ gee
So them big horses can’t run ovah me

Chorus

It took me a while to find this song on the internet. It is listed in temperance songs in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_songs and is mentioned in The Christian Advocate under lyrics: The Brewers Big Horses. It is listed as written in 1913 by JB Herbert and HS Taylor. Isn’t it interesting that Budweiser still uses the Brewer’s Big Horses in advertising?

Again, this is a song I was learning way before I know what a brewer or a turnpike was. My parents stopped singing a bunch of songs when they realized that I was memorizing all of them. They did not want me singing certain songs in Kindergarten.

They did not need to worry. I shut up when I got to school, because no one wanted to sing and no one knew the songs. They all talked about television and we didn’t have one.

I was very disappointed in school. Not enough singing and it was lonely.

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Juxtaposition

The photograph in my Quimper Family Medicine home clinic and guest room is of my grandmother and my daughter, in 1988. I took the picture. My grandmother is Evelyn Ottaway. The other picture is one of my mother/baby or parent/child pictures. I like the juxtaposition.

It’s not just parent/child that is important. It is parent/child, grandparent/child, great grandparent/child.

I am reading a book that appeared in my little free library box, about grandmothering skills. It’s got some very interesting ideas and I am enjoying it! Radical, man.

My grandmother had amazing organizational skills. I think that my daughter got them from her.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Radical.

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biotics explained

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Antibiotics: THESE KILL PROBIOTICS. BY THE MILLIONS. THESE ARE PASSE, OUT OF FASHION, EVIL AND YOU REALLY DON’T WANT THEM (unless you have strep throat or pneumonia or sepsis, and even then, the antibiotics suck because the sepsis mortality rate is 28-50%, THAT MEANS HALF THE SEPSIS VICTIMS DIE EVEN WITH ANTIBIOTICS, DOES THAT PROVE THEY SUCK OR WHAT?)

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