Category Archives: family

by

Coping or manipulation?

I see someone in clinic with a difficult boss.

This brought up work stories. Now, are these coping skills or manipulation or a bit of both? You decide.

Long ago I work in a lab at the National Institutes of Health. We are super busy and doing a lot of overtime and have some media pressure as well. Our boss gets us together and gives us hell, about making mistakes. I am annoyed, because I’ve been really careful. I stew. I write a letter, what I think he should have said, which is telling us all great job, you’ve worked super hard, we are under pressure and also we need to not make mistakes. I circulate it to the four other lab techs, who enjoy it. The lab cheers up a bit. Eventually I get brave and give it to the boss. He likes it and reads it to everyone, who try not to laugh. A year after I leave the lab, I visit, and he has that letter up on his bulletin board.

Long ago I am made chief of staff at a hospital. My goal is to finish the monthly meeting in an hour. I have two senior doctors who always blow up about something in the meeting. I decide to be proactive and go to each one before the meeting and prime them. I pick a topic, say I am worrying about it, and what do they think? They each then blow up in the meeting, but now they have no opposition so there is no brawl. I prime them about something that is not really controversial. I do get the meetings done in an hour.

One year I go to the lake with my family. My children are small. My father has been drinking heavily. I call ahead and say, “Will you treat our tent site like my house and not come there if you are drinking?” “You don’t own the lake land,” says my father. “We don’t have to come.” I reply. He agrees not to drink at our tent site.

He is angry, though, and pretty much won’t speak to me. I ask if he would come to a family sing at my site. He says no. I think about it for a while and ask my cousin to hold a sing at her cabin. My father agrees to that, not knowing that I am the instigator. He is happy at it because he’s said no to me and yes to her, and I am happy too, because I love to sing and sing with him.

My father was one of eight people to start Rainshadow Chorale in 1997. I sang with him in the chorale from 2000 until the year he died.

Where is the line between manipulation and coping with a difficult person?

I think this is a time travelogue, so let it be my Ragtag Daily Prompt for today.

The photograph is of my father in 2012. He died in 2013.

by

Giant rolls?

Do these look like giant delicious rolls?

Or maybe the front one is the Starship Enterprise and the back one is an enormous rabbit chasing it.

I do miss bakeries. I still go in with my daughter and sniff all of the delicious aromas, but I can only eat the things without gluten. Never mind, I could eat whatever I wanted for half my life.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bakery.

by

Outdoor feed

My daughter, her housemate and her housemate’s parents came Friday night. We all went to Arches National Park yesterday morning. This is part of the Parade of Elephants.

This morning we went to the Colorado National Monument again.

My daughter and I both practically backed away from this optical illusion. CUT THAT OUT! NOT FUNNY!

Anyhow, the outdoors is my feed, nourishing and amazing all the time.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: feed.

by

Soldier on

Older
bolder
golder
told yer
moulder
soldier on

What is older? Anything and anyone older than me? At one point I have 5 women who are over 100 years old as patients. Two are 104. One is local indigenous tribe and tells me about white women moving to another pew if she sat down near them in church, back when she is in her twenties. I am apologetic at that visit because it is hospital week. Our pacific northwest hospital has chosen cowboys as the theme so being a bit oppositional defiant, I have braids with one feather hanging down. I swear that EVERY ONE of my indigenous patients comes in, including the 104 year old. I apologize, but they mostly seem amused by my rebellion.

They also influence me. Now when a 72 year old complains about being OLD, I say, “You are not old in my practice.” They look confused. I say, “I’ve had five people over 100 all at once, so you don’t get to complain about being old until you are 90.” People laugh, but they also usually look pleased. Over 100 is a LOT older than 72. When someone is over 100, I don’t really doctor them much. I might say, “This is what the book says we should do.” “I’m not doing that,” says my 101 year old. “Ok, cool.” I say. It’s hard to argue with.

And the joke about the centurian? What do you like best about turning 100? “No peer pressure.” Um, yes. I want them to tell ME what they’ve done to reach 100. The one thing that they all have in common is that they are all stubborn. I don’t know if stubbornness is what gets them there or if we just get more stubborn as we get older. Both, perhaps.

By stubborn, I don’t mean that they don’t learn and do new things. I had a woman in her upper 70s who I diagnosed with diabetes. At the next visit she said cheerfully, “I found these five apps for my phone. This one tells me the carbohydrates, this keeps track of the distance I walk, this one tracks my blood sugar.” I don’t remember what the other two did. This was a decade ago. She was retired from Microsoft. I wanted her to teach a class for me and all of my other diabetic patients.

My grandmother took classes in her 80s in lip-reading. She was going quite deaf and her hearing aides were not terribly helpful. She had videotapes and a rather shy teacher who would come to the house. She would glare at him and the videotapes. She attacked learning it like a piranha and was furious that she couldn’t learn it faster. I am like that too and my son learned some patience from the violin. He couldn’t play well immediately and found that practice works.

At what age is someone old? I think that’s moving target and the older we get, the older we think it is. I do think 104 is a lot older than 72. When does your culture think that people are old? My fierce grandmother said that she would look out her window. “I see little old ladies across the street and think, oh, poor things, they are so old. But then I think, OH, I am older then they are!” She died at age 93, fierce until the end and curious about death too. Her last words to my father were, “Look, Mac, I’m dying.” He said, “I’m looking,” and she stopped breathing. She was always curious and funny and could tease quite terribly and she and my mother butted heads and loved each other. She loved my father too, and me.

The photograph is my maternal grandmother, Katherine White Burling and it’s one I took.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: older.

by

National Monument

The word monument makes me think of a memorial or a statue, not a huge park with rock formations. That is a national monument: “a place of historic, scenic, or scientific interest set aside for preservation usually by presidential proclamation”, according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary on line. The Colorado National Monument is from 1911 and by President Taft. The 23 mile Rimrock Drive is two lanes, switchbacks, tunnels and pull offs for hikes and views. It was not very crowded on Sunday but there were multiple bicycles and really little or no shoulder. We were very careful to have a stretch that we could see before we passed anyone. It certainly will put anyone in shape to ride that road!

The photograph is of window rock. There are few railings in the monument, but there is one by the window. With a sign saying “Do NOT go out on Window Rock.” I agree and we didn’t.

Right now there are 121 National Monuments in the US, according to this site. They are different from National Parks and National Forests. Let’s go visit them ALL! That would be an interesting bucket list and I would be that someone has done it.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: monument.

by

You can have some of the things some of the time

My father’s name is Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway. He went by Mac. He died in 2013. I miss him and I still follow Mac’s Rule.

Mac’s Rule is simple: You can get one third of the things that you think you can get done in a day.

I played with this on my days off for quite a while. I would write a list of all the things I wanted or needed to get done. Once I write the full list, it looks silly. Soon it is clear that he is correct.

When I am working full time in Family Medicine and have a five year old and a new baby, I think about getting something done on the weekend. Clear my desk, organize photographs, that sort of thing. After a while I realize that the weekend was more like this: Meals. Get kids clean and dressed. Laundry for the next week. Clean the house a bit. Do some fun family things! Read to kids and put them to bed! My list changed and instead of the ambitious “organize photographs”, I would think of something very small. Perhaps take one roll of developed photographs, pick some of the duplicates, send them to the grandparents. That was it for the entire weekend.

If I apply Mac’s Rule to my life and list all the things I want to do, which third will I pick? For years I write lists for a day off and then pick the top third that I want to get done. If something is added to the list, a friend calls to go to coffee, I take something else off. I make sure that the list always has something that I need to do on it (and often don’t want to: start taxes, pay bills, clean a bathroom, whatever). And something fun.

I don’t try to do it all. It’s very satisfying to get that 1/3 done on the list. And I feel like superwoman if I get an extra thing done! I get to choose which third to do and think about it. And the stuff that I don’t want to do slowly gets done over time. It isn’t that awful to do one of those duty jobs, thank you letters, tax information, dental appointment, mammogram, every day and then it gets DONE.

I am working with someone who puts RUSH at the start of every single email subject line. I have to say that it makes me want to dig my feet in and not even read the email. What kind of rash haste are they working under and why would I pay any attention to the RUSH by the ninth email? It is annoying and ludicrous. I move those emails to the next day list and don’t read them on the day of arrival. No pressure, so there.

Blessings on my father, for Mac’s Rule.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rash.

The photograph had to be taken before May 2000, because my mother died on May 15 and she is on the boat. I don’t know who took it, another group sailing. Both my kids are there, my father with the tiller, and I am tucked behind the friend facing the camera. Why haven’t we pulled the motor up? This is Sun Tui, the boat currently in my driveway on a trailer.

by

Foul weather gear

My daughter gave me new foul weather pants for sailing for my birthday. She borrowed mine when she started college. She was on the racing team at Western Washington and my pants took a beating. During this visit she put about 1/3 of a roll of duct tape on them for an alumni race in the Lopez Island harbor. I offered to loan her my new pants but she explained that hers are now a tradition, duct tape and all. Her team won the regatta.

Here we are showing off the pants. I got lots of hugs for my birthday too, hoorah. I think my son took the photograph!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: hug.

by

Winged week

This week has been mercurial. Both my daughter-in-law and I have birthdays. All three of my children were home, my son and daughter-in-law from the east coast and my daughter from Colorado. This feels luxurious after Covid-19. My son and daughter-in-law are making the rounds, spending time with her parents and friends on the Olympic Peninsula, Seattle and Portland, Oregon. It has been delightful and busy too and this is the first week in ages that I’ve missed a day blogging (yesterday) and I think THREE Ragtag Daily Prompts. I have driven round trip to Bremerton twice and once to Kingston over the last three days. My daughter leaves on the Port Townsend ferry later this afternoon. The cats are still wondering WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT? I think that Sol Duc wonders, but Elwha is mostly just in a state of wonderment. He found my son large, fast-moving and quite overwhelming at first, even though Elwha is the biggest cat we’ve ever had.

The photograph is the table all decorated and ready for family guests, on Tuesday. The cats were quite mystified because they got closed out of two bedrooms for the week and then people arrived. Very confusing!

We had a lovely time.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: mercurial.