Category Archives: play

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Post Covid Sartorial Splendor

I dressed up in November for the Chamber of Commerce masquerade. This is a 1920s dress and I had to repair the lace around both arm openings. The underdress is rust colored silk and is beaded. The overdress is lace with the beaded and fringed flower with a tassel on the side. The lace is definitely see through and I wore a slip. The silk underdress has beaded squared off tags that hang outside the lace, which is a detail I haven’t seen before. I do not remember where I got this, second hand.

When the silk is nearly 100 years old, it wants to fall apart. I took a second dress just in case there was dancing. If I danced in this dress, it would probably disintegrate.

In other news, here is an article about the Post Covid exercise intolerance. It is a small sample size, but they biopsied skin and muscle in people who were still exercise intolerant one year out from Covid 19. These people all had Covid-19 in 2020, so unimmunized.

https://actaneurocomms.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40478-023-01662-2

“Compared to two independent historical control cohorts, patients with post-COVID exertion intolerance had fewer capillaries, thicker capillary basement membranes and increased numbers of CD169+ macrophages. SARS-CoV-2 RNA could not be detected in the muscle tissues. In addition, complement system related proteins were more abundant in the serum of patients with PCS, matching observations on the transcriptomic level in the muscle tissue. We hypothesize that the initial viral infection may have caused immune-mediated structural changes of the microvasculature, potentially explaining the exercise-dependent fatigue and muscle pain.”

This is a big deal. More needs to be done to confirm this, but a talk earlier this year said that the muscles don’t get adequate blood flow and get hypoxic and that the fatigue is recovery afterwards, taking 1-3 days. That is the best hypothesis for why people have the activity “crashes” after exercise or doing a little bit more than usual. My chronic fatigue shuts my fast twitch muscles down when I have pneumonia. This time it was two years before I got them back and I still have to be careful. It’s weird when they won’t work. It’s like the muscles go on strike. They didn’t really hurt (ok, they burned like strep throat all over the two times I had systemic strep A) but it’s more like the muscles are screaming NO NO NO NO! at the brain. It is hard to describe. If I tried to push, it felt like dying. Perhaps the muscle cells really DO start dying if we push them too hard. Mine is annoying but it doesn’t confine me to bed. My slow twitch muscles were fine though this time I needed oxygen. I hope not to experience it again.

This is the mask I wore. Nice to be in a different sort of mask, but I masked at a concert last night and will mask for travel with an N95.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sartorial choices.

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Sexually active

At a clinic visit this week the Medical Assistant screens me. “Are you sexually active?”

I say, “Um, what do you mean?”

“Are you sexually active?”

“Um, I do not have a partner.” By now, I really want to laugh.

She still looks confused. “You are not sexually active.”

“Ok.” I try not to giggle. Apparently her question series does not cover um, solo sexual activity and I resist telling her about the downtown sexual health and toy store. The new multispeed, multipattern suction toys are, well, enlightening and INSPIRING and EXPLOSIVE.. Or, um, something. Snort.

Let’s just study the dome. This is from Venice and tells the story of Adam and Eve.

I have sent a message to my physician saying that they may want to rephrase the questions. “Do you have any sexual partners?” would be more enlightening as far as sexually transmitted disease risk. Heh. The whole thing cracked me up. My blood pressure was still 108 over 70. Ha, so there, heart disease. My English/Scots father’s family is adapted to tobacco and alcohol and my father ran a low blood pressure even with 55 years of unfiltered Camels in his lungs.

Heh.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dome. This is the Basilica San Marcos, which has multiple domes. This one tells the story of Adam and Eve. I now want to paint one of my ceilings. The bathrooms have too much moisture. I suspect this will not enthuse future realtors.

Alone and lonely are not the same thing.

Fantasy is good.

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Found

Barbie doctor is trying to interview the Get Real Girl about the origin of the missing part in front of her, but Elwha intervenes.

“Who, me?” says Elwha. “I am trying to help! I don’t eat Barbies or Get Real Girls!”

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: missing part.

The funny bit is that I knew right where this missing part was: on a dresser upstairs. It’s the rest of the doll that has gone missing.

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Barbie stole

The cats find this in my house and carry it around. I had Barbies in the 1970s. You can see the tag in this picture. Barbie/Mattel. The stole is made of rabbit fur with a nylon lining. Very 1970s, since I doubt Mattel would sell rabbit fur as a Barbie accessory now. The cats think it is fabulous.

The doll holding it is not a Barbie. It is a Get Real Girl, who has more normal proportions and normal feet. This one came with a backpack, hiking clothes and all she needs for camping. She is from the early 2000s. She’s better at driving the ambulance than the Barbies because her joints are much more fluid.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: stole.

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The Extroverted Feeler and Barbie

With all the fuss over the Barbie Movie, I am thinking about Barbie. This takes place in the 1990s. I wrote it in 2018.

When my extroverted feeler son is four, he announces that he wants a Barbie for Christmas. Hmmm, I think.

I tell my mother. She sends him a Barbie. Blonde hair to her ankles and in an itsy bitsy blue glitter bikini. My son names her Pocahontas.

Back to work in January. On the first day back to daycare, my son is searching for something. “Mom?”

I am rushing around getting ready for work.

“Where is my backpack?” He has a small pink backpack with shiny gems pasted on it. We moved from Portland, Oregon to Alamosa, Colorado. All the kids in the Portland parent run daycare insisted on pink jelly sandals, both girls and boys. My son has stopped wearing pink immediately when he goes to the Colorado daycare.

I find the backpack. He stuffs the Barbie in headfirst, satisfied. Hmmm, I think. Taking Barbie to daycare. I take him to daycare and then stand and watch. He is working the room. He goes to a girl, says “Look!” and holds the backpack so she can see inside.

That evening I ask him. “Who did you show the Barbie to?”

“I showed it to Anna and Marni and Becka and Marie,” he says.

“Did you show the Barbie to any boys?”

“Mom!” he says with scorn. “You don’t show Barbies to boys!”

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The Barbie ambulance opens out into a clinic. Twin one, on the Get Real Girl’s lap, has bright red cheeks. Probably parvovirus. Twin two in the cradle has no rash. If I had worn heels like this Dr. Barbie while working, I would have never made it through a day!

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Nature Song

This is the first song I think of with today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: onomatopoeia. This song sounds like kids playing and speeds up like kids do and all the laughter, about being outside. Wonderful! I love the Sweet Honey in the Rock kids’ records as well as adult records and my kids did too.

Here is an adult song followed by the kids’ song and circling back to the difficult adult part.

I took the photograph at the Centrum Jazz Port Townsend Concert, the Matthew Whittaker Quintet. Wow, wonderful.

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Satirical

I am looking through photographs looking for a Satyr. Or Satyrs. I know that I have Fauns on a frieze in a very peculiar old repurposed Elks Club in Portland, but Fauns are not quite Satyrs. And satirical is from a different origin than Satyr.

Really, though, I am surprised that no one was dressed as a Satyr at the Great Port Townsend Kinetic Sculpture Race.

The costumes are always amazing.

Here is a sculpture with the rider. A Satyr or not?

This is the day before the race, with the parade and the brake test and the water test. The water is in the 40s or low 50s.

What do we call a female Satyr?

No, surely she is not one. Will the Judges permit Satyrs?

It does not appear that they will.

The cover picture is most satirical to me: the joyful silliness of the human powered race, on land, on sea and through mud, with a sailboat race in the background and Indian Island, with a crane and a military presence. Let’s have more more more joyful silliness.

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The Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race: https://www.ptkineticrace.org/

This is the 2018 Race.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Satyr.