November 25, 2022 by drkottaway

The happiest day of his life

When I was a preteen, I got my first Spiderman comic book. I was enthralled. A hero who had powers, but had a grandmother, responsibilities, made mistakes, felt guilt and confusion. I wanted this, not the princess crap. I did not want a prince to ride in and carry me off. I did not and don’t trust princes. The wedding being the happiest day of a woman’s life: what the hell? Is it the happiest day of the man’s life? If not why not? It’s important to the woman to be married to her love but not the man?

And anyhow, the Disney movies were very consistent. There were no good Disney Queens. The good ones died in childbirth, or were absent, or their ship went down. The stepmothers were evil. The princess career ended with marriage. Pregnancy either kills you or turns you evil. Actually, sex turns you evil if you are a female. That was the very clear Disney message judging by the animated features. Virgin girls are pure princesses but there are no adult female role models for years and years and years. By my preteens I wanted to drive my own wagon: I was not going to be taken care of, controlled, or left poor and with small children through divorce. I would have a career and children.

What IS the happiest day of a man’s life? Do we have any map of that? When they are promoted? When they buy twitter? When they are elected President? When they get married? Why do we have a happiest day for women (and is it the marriage or the sex?) but not for men?

In the romance novels, the man is usually older, “experienced”, rich, and has a reputation for seducing women. The woman is often a virgin, or she has a child because there was an evil man who she thought loved her, or the older man got her pregnant and she never told him. She knows it is true love because she is pure and yet is overcome by lust, so it must be true love. Snort. I have always thought this is stupid and silly. So men in the novels are experienced, have sex with lots of women, and then are carried away by lust that turns out to be true love with this woman? What about all the others? Did they think it was true love too? Or were they “bad” women, who had lust without true love? Impure, not virgins, not a “good” girl. Seems pretty confusing to me. Often the virgin gets pregnant because, hey, she is carried away by uncontrollable love, so of course she would not think about birth control. What is the experienced man thinking? Hey, let’s get this one pregnant, I’d like to pay child support? Oh, he’s carried away by uncontrollable love, but really now, you’d think after all that experience that he would use birth control. Apparently the rich experienced older seducer males are all morons when struck in the heart by true love. These books should be burned, really.

Anyhow, I was suspicious of the princess story and I wanted my own horse and armor and sword and I’ll fight my own dragons, thank you! I was much more interested in the super hero story, even though the superheroines were still pretty lame and likely to get killed off. Oh, and girlfriends get killed off. Gwen dying from fear during a fall: give me a break. Yuk. Made me glad she was dead if she was that much of a weakling. At least she couldn’t reproduce. I liked Mary Jane a whole lot more: feisty.

I wanted to be a superhero and still human, not a princess.

So what is the happiest day of a man’s life?

_____

The cat is Boa, not Sol Duc. Boa died at age 17 right before Covid-19 started.

November 25, 2022 by drkottaway

Underground fungus networks

Mushrooms are the excrescences of underground fungus networks.

Excrescences! In my yard! At my home! Do the underground fungus networks make you reassured about the health of my yard or is it worrisome? Will the fungus grab me and pull me under?

We’ll have to wait and see.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: excrescence.

November 24, 2022 by drkottaway

set by

Let me set hatred by for this one day
let each feast with family full of joys
leave that empty, no anger or dismay
and maybe keep that chamber empty save for toys
Let there be no bombs down from the sky
let no one fall to firing with a gun
let no flogging make any children cry
let no one need to cower or to run
I don’t know what to call this day right now
Guilt day or day we stole this gorgeous land?
I give thanks for love and wonder how
We can heal the past, what demands?
Two friends will come to feast and sip eggnog
My cats will be surprised: they bring their dog.

November 24, 2022 by drkottaway

cliffs down

I took a wonderful beach walk, 3-4 miles, yesterday.

The annoying thing was that my muscles are still grumpy. I took a nap afterwards and they STILL wanted me to go to sleep at 5 pm. I made it to 6, barely.

That was the pattern I noticed when I was finishing pulmonary rehab. On the exercise days and the day after, I would sleep for twelve hours. I would have a nap and then sleep for another 8-10 hours at night. Muscle repair and ME-CFS, but still, mine is mild. I don’t have to lie in bed 23 hours a day. I am very very happy about that.

That is a tree, dead, in the first picture. Sections of cliff collapse. I always worry that I will see feet sticking out, as in the Wizard of Oz. A friend saw a whole section come down and said if he’d been 30 yards further down the beach, he would have been under it. It is sand and clay. Here is a close up of a small chunk of clay.

Here is a big section that has fallen, trees and all.

And here is a tree only part way down. I am careful on the beach, but I think sections can fall with no warning! And I worry when I see children or adults climbing partway up the cliffs. Not me.

November 24, 2022 by drkottaway

gamble

I have to read about Packapoo Tickets for today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt! This is new to me!

I take a gamble and make a new cat toy. I tape tissue paper to the top of the plastic bin and then put a hole in it. Elwha watches while I drop a toy mouse in there. He spends lots of time getting the mouse out! Exhausted from his labors, he rests.

Later Sol Duc decides to explore the new toy as well. But, it’s bath time. No, it’s toy time. No, it’s both.

Packapoo ticket here: https://teara.govt.nz/en/ephemera/8649/pakapoo-ticket.

November 22, 2022 by drkottaway

Blessed

You needn’t worry that I will importune you.
Words explode and swirl upon the page.
It’s more likely that I’ll say blankly “Who?”
Since I enlarge upon a fascinating stage.
Approaching two years since I was taken sick,
on oxygen I wrote a poem of farewell.
Career ending injury: nature can be such a dick.
Breathing is important. Absent it is hell.
I am still healing. I hope that I can ski.
I am lucky that my fatigue is relatively mild.
My oxygen can go 9000 feet up where I’ll see
muscle dysfunction truly makes me wild.
Friends and family gather close and gather far
I feel blessed beneath a lucky star.

________________

Sonnet #2 for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sonnet.

November 22, 2022 by drkottaway

Vaccination talk

My cousin asks me once, why do doctors say, “This will only hurt a little?’ when they give a shot.

I thought about it. “It’s a matter of scale. Picture this: in room one, I have a woman who thinks her lung cancer is back and it is. In room two I have a mother and daughter crying because the daughter is pregnant and frightened. In room three, I have a well adult who needs a vaccination. Scale their levels of pain.”

Room one is very high, room two is very high, room three barely registers on my pain scale.

Poll: 1 in 7 parents have not talked about vaccines with their child’s doctor

I would give out a health department vaccination information booklet by 24 weeks to my pregnant patients, especially the first pregnancy. I previously had given it later, but then I had a woman who refused the child’s vaccines at visit after visit after visit, saying that they were still doing research. The child still had no vaccinations at 9 months.

Remember the woman who refused vaccinations for her children? She had more than four children. They all got whooping cough, pertussis. They whooped for months and were on quarantine. They were not allowed out of the household, any of them, until they were no longer infectious. The mother said she now was for vaccines and got them vaccinated.

I have seen adults with pertussis. Adults do not whoop but they cough. They can cough until they throw up or until they break a rib. For months. It is not fun at all. The adult Tdap stands for tetnus, diptheria, and acellular pertussis. I have never seen a case of diptheria and I don’t want to. It sounds horrible and can kill.

Have I seen a complication of a vaccination? One in 30 years of practice. And I know a person who had a complication, but they were not my patient.

The illnesses cause way more damage and disability than the vaccine. In residency I care for a young man in a group home. He can’t talk and has an odd skull shape. His mother got measles during the pregnancy. Measles is one of the infections that can cause severe birth defects. Get vaccinated before getting pregnant, though half the pregnancies in the US are “unintended”. That usually means “unbirthcontrolled”. I do not really understand that, since the risk of pregnancy in a fertile woman is one in four every time. Twenty five percent seems a pretty high risk to me.

I’ve written about my response to my last Covid-19 vaccination. It’s not a complication. It is an antibody response and it means that my immune system is WORKING, though admittedly it is weird and annoying. I don’t like the muscle dysfunction, but I will get the vaccinations anyhow.

I have a very alternative young woman in for prenatal care once. I give her the vaccination booklet. “Oh, my child is getting every vaccine there is,” she says.

“May I ask why? I was not expecting you to say that.”

“I was in the Peace Corps in Africa. I have seen kids die from every single one of the diseases we vaccinate for. My kid will get ALL the vaccinations.”

I said, “Please would you talk to my other moms?”

She smiled at that. “Maybe.”

I hope she did and does.

November 21, 2022 by drkottaway

The tweeter is twerked

Ok, I never signed up to twitter. Bunch of twits.

But I did write another verse for the song SAVED. It might not be the one that comes up on the You tube search. I learn it as a teen from side B of Moondog Matinee by The Band.

I sang it to my father. He said, “Where did you learn THAT?” I didn’t know and did an internet search. I forgot what album I leaned it from. It was his album, that I recorded on tape before I went to college.

Here is my new verse:

I used to Tweet, I used to Twerk, I used to Tweet, Twerk, I was such a Jerk

I used to tweet and twerk, tweet and twerk and I was such a jerk

But now I’m standing on the corner, it was too much work

That’s cause I’m saved, that’s cause I’m saved

People let me tell you about Kingdom Come

I’m saved, I’m saved, I’m going to preach until you’re deaf and dumb

I’m in the Salvation Army, beating on the big bass drum!

_____________

Who else sang it? Laverne Baker! She is the earliest I’ve found. Recorded in 1960, though the videos are later.