outdoors

For mindlovesmisery’s Sunday writing prompt: gift.

My sister and I were blessed by the gift of connection to outdoors. To forest, lake, field, desert, prairie. I sleep better in a tent on the warm earth than any house, ever. When the world is too much with me, or the news is too awful, or a patient dies of ovarian cancer and is younger than me….

…..I walk on the beach, in the forest, in my neighborhood. I sing back to the birds. I speak chickadee well enough that they perch on a branch close by and sing back. Or argue, perhaps. Swinging on a branch.

Outdoors is my church, my solace, my love, my connection with the earth, with nature, with the Beloved. Air, water, fire, earth, wood…. home is outdoors.

 

 

 

I voted

…after I spent about three hours going through paper and throwing it out… ok, like a total numbskull I mislaid my ballot. Have you mislaid your ballot? FIND IT! VOTE!

” …that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

When I went across the country as a Mad as Hell Doctor in 2009, we talked to people everywhere. I joined the group in Seattle. I had never met any of them and had only heard about them two weeks before. But we were on the road, talking about health care, talking about single payer healthcare, talking about Medicare for All.

Some people said, “I don’t want the government in healthcare.”

We would ask, “Are you against medicare?” “No!” “Medicaid?” “No!” “Active duty military health care?” “No! We must take care of our active duty!” “Veterans?”  “No! They have earned it!”

…but those are all administered by the government. More than half of health care in the US. So let’s go forward: let’s all join together and have Medicare for ALL! And if you don’t agree… so you don’t think you should vote? Hmmm, I am wrestling my conscience here….

We need one system, without 20 cents of every insurance paid dollar going to health insurance profit and advertising and refusing care and building 500++ websites that really, I do not have time to learn and that change all the time anyhow. How about ONE website? How about ONE set of rules? We are losing doctors. It’s not just me worrying: it’s in the latest issue of the American Academy of Family Practice.

Vote. For your health and for your neighbor’s health.

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Physicians for a National Healthcare Progam: http://pnhp.org/

Healthcare Now: https://www.healthcare-now.org/

I can’t credit the photograph, because I don’t remember who took it…. or if it was with my camera or phone or someone else’s! But thank you, whoever you are!

Mundane Monday #183: getting ready

For Mundane Monday #183: getting ready.

This organized chaos is from 2010. I am thinking about parents and kids. Here we were getting ready for our yearly synchronized swim team show. This involves painting the hair to stay in place with thick very warm gelatin. We did that outside. It’s messy.  Synchronized swimming might not be mundane to you but we all have times when we get ready or help others get ready.

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My daughter is the one on the left: mom, you are bugging us.

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Ready. Pretty much. With a little trepidation.

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And ready hair.

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And the whole team in the water, in the finale, hooray, we did it!

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If you want to join in, I will list the entries next week.

For last week’s theme: kitchen close up:

KLAllendorfer with lots of lovely kitchen photographs.

 

bask 2

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bask.

We got Princess Mittens and Boa Black at the same time, very different pound kittens. I was out with a complication of influenza (2003) and out for two months. My lungs were swollen and I just had to wait and rest until the swelling went down. Princess was killed by a car at age 10, but we still have Boa.

Princess was an expert at basking.