Category Archives: joy

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whiskers

For today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt.

The kittens were both two pounds and a bit when I got them. Last Thursday they got their last set of vaccines for a year and they are now both six pounds. They are growing like weeds. My last cat was a small cat. If the stated age was right when I got them, these two are going to be BIG.

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tree time

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is perpetuity. Trees have a different time sense then we do. They send electrical messages like we do, but they are slower. Still, the tree can change it’s leaves within hours, to taste bad or poison a pest. I wonder if we seem fast and short lived and impatient to them.

Here is my friend Simon Lynge’s Perpetual Now:

Simon Lynge Perpetual Now
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apparition

We are fishing and playing a little and then we hear something. I stick my head up. Dad does too, and my sisters. What is it? It is making noises! There, on the beach. Something roaring in two tones!

There are two. The smaller one is doing most of the roaring. It is weird. Two tones, a low growly one and a higher one that sings.

It is creepy, that smaller one. I think it sees us. It has a mechanical eye. Dad says, “Dive.” We talk under water. Maybe it is trying to steal our souls or lure us to death on the beach.

We do have to come up for air though. Now they both roar. Dad barks: “STOP” and what do the horrors do? They try to imitate him! Are they making fun of him?

Now the smaller one is just making high song noises. Sort of like a creepy bird. It keeps going back to the double growl, though.

Dad says, “Come on.” We dive and head the other way along the beach. The appartitions are picking up things from the beach. I am very glad they didn’t get us. This time.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: apparition.

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Apple crisp by Malene

Malene’s apple crisp

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Slice apples and place in baking pan.

Mix:
1/2 C. flour
1 C brown sugar
1 C oatmeal
1 stick butter
dash cinnamon

Mix the flour and etc and put the mix on the apples in the pan.
Cook in 350 degree F oven until brown. 30 minutes in my oven.

You can peel the apples or not.
You can add some apple juice.

sliced apples
topping for apple crisp
ready for topping
ready to bake
yummmmmmy
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Thank you for the music

I have been in Rainshadow Chorale since 2000. My father, Malcolm Ottaway, was one of the eight people who started it in 1997. He and my mother moved here in 1996. My mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, died of ovarian cancer on May 15, 2000. Rainshadow agreed to sing a Byrd Mass for my mother’s memorial. My father asked if my sister and I could sing in the chorale for the memorial. We were told yes. I had moved to Port Townsend at the end of 1999.

After the Memorial, I asked if I could stay in the chorale. The answer was yes and I have been in it ever since.

Our director, Rebecca Rottsolk, is retiring from the chorale after our next concert. She has picked favorite pieces. I have sung in nearly every concert since 2000, though I couldn’t sing in the one right after my father died in 2013. He followed my sister, who died in 2012. My throat wouldn’t let me sing that one.

So Rebecca, thank you for the music and thank you for being a wonderful director and forcing us to level up over and over. I am sending you peace and love and joy.

And everyone else, put this concert on your calendar.

Rainshadow Chorale practicing outdoors wearing masks in a fine rain. Dedication.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: thanks.

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kitten in a bag

I have two new kittens, named after rivers. They have been here two weeks and two days.

They were only about 7 weeks when I got them, boy and girl, just fixed and groggy from anesthesia on the ride home. They had been fostered a little, and are well trained for catbox and for not using claws on hands.

The first favored toy is a cardboard box, the right size to hold one of them. They spend a lot of time with one inside the box and one outside. Sometimes with a toy mouse on the inside too.

This am before I got up, one of them went into a bag. However, it was a small gift bag with the handles. Apparently he got caught in the handles, panicked and tore around the room and then down the stairs. That was the tiger. I lay in bed laughing.

The black one just did the same thing. She got her neck through the handle and then tore through the kitchen and living room. She got out before I got to her so I couldn’t help laughing at her. Nine weeks or not, she stomped away with her ears in the embarrassed cat position.

Good that I didn’t leave the bag out the first week they were here. I was supposed to “keep them quiet” since they were post-operative. You can guess how well that went. One jumped over the back of the couch from the floor and landed on me when I was half asleep and then tore off the couch. They seem fine.

I am leaving the bag out to see if they investigate further.

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pebbles

This is for the RDP stone prompt, my prompt.

Small pebbles… except now we have to sing: “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong! Can you guess which thing is not like the others, by the time I finish my song!”

And here is a photo for scale.