Category Archives: outdoors

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Last on the card, March 2024

For Brian’s Last on the Card, unedited from the two cameras I’ve been using.

The cover one is my Panasonic DMC-FZ150, taken out North Beach on March 29. I thought there might be otters, but no, zoomed in it is mostly mussels. Happy mussels. The tide was way out.

Trees in bloom at church, taken with my iPhone SE.

Happy March and happy April!

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Dock and gangplank

As the tide comes in, the dock and the boat rise with the tide. The rings rise up the pipes of the pipe dock.

The gangplank is hinged so it can swivel. Stairs would not make sense, because the angle would change as the tide changes.

No hinges or swivels on the bridge!

I took these yesterday in La Conner, Washington. This is the Rainbow Bridge over Swinomish Channel.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: swivel.

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Safe/Not Safe

I think safety is an illusion. BUT it is also nice to feel safe and embrace the illusion.

I sleep best in tents, because as a child, I felt safest at our families “shacks on a lake” in Ontario. Cabins, but pretty much one room cabins. No electricity, outhouses, and my family lived in tents. I loved it. I was more afraid of people than bears.

The pandemic, or this pandemic, has made people feel less safe. But that safety was an illusion too. I had influenza in 2003 and was out sick for two months. I had a racing heart and it hurt to breathe. No asthma. Only rest seemed to help. My doctor and I had no idea when it would resolve. It resolved after two months. My partners accused me of malingering and lying.

A fast heart rate can come from a panic attack, but it works the other way too. If your heart rate is very fast, you may feel panicky. When I nebulize people with albuterol for the first time, I warn them that it may feel like adrenaline, it may speed their heart and they might feel panicky. A friend with Long Covid kept saying that maybe they were just anxious. I got them to have an Urgent Care test them: a resting and a walking heart rate. At rest 72 beats per minute. Normal. Walking, their heart rate jumped to 165, very abnormal! Normal is 70-100 beats per minute, though if one is out of shape, 110 or 120 can result from unaccustomed exercise. But there is no way an athlete in their 20s should jump to 165. The Long Covid heart rate was driving the anxiety, not the other way around.

After I had the 2003 influenza, I read a book of essays about the 1918-1921 influenza pandemic. And I realized that we would probably have a pandemic in my lifetime. I thought it would be influenza, not coronavirus! Hopefully the world will learn a little from this one and change a little over time and be a little more sane if (ok, when) there is another pandemic.

I saw this video today. Wow, what costumes (all 1970s) and dancing! Wonderful! And such a sad song about a broken friendship that used to feel safe.

I hope that you have places or people that you feel safe with. Elwha sometimes likes to sit in the cat tent, even if it is partly open. It feels safe.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: safe.