Category Archives: stone shaped heart

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float

I took this with the zoom all the way out. We’d argued about whether it was a log. I said it was not a log. I was correct.

This creature is definitely bouyant but is not floating in the picture. He or she is lying on a high sandbar or piece of rock. There wasn’t room with the others, or perhaps he or she eschews the crowd.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bouyant.

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Friends and illness

The good thing about getting deathly ill is that you find out who your friends are. They stay by you. Even if you are misdiagnosed, labelled, ignored.

It is harder to ignore me now that I am on oxygen. It is difficult to chalk oxygen up to a rumored behavioral health diagnosis. When you have pneumonia and are confused, that is called delirium, not mania.

The bad thing about being deathly ill is that you find out who is NOT a friend. They disappear like rats leaving a sinking ship. Actually I like rats better.

I have one person who says, “I like you well, not sick.” Um, I would rather stay well too. But having seen fully 20 specialists, including four pulmonologists since 2012, a cure seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Meanwhile I seem to be getting stronger in pulmonary rehabilitation. Treadmill, classes about the lungs, stretching and weights.

Another person states, “if you get sick again, I am gone for four months.” Not a friend, right? Not a true friend and never ever will be. They do not understand friendship.

A true friend shows up at my house in 2012. I am lying on my bed using my father’s oxygen. She glares at me. “YOU are coming to MY house.” My reply: “OK.” I survive, even when the hospital sends me home with strep A pneumonia and delirium. Helps to be a physician, though I had to just trust myself, even delirious. The true friends help save me. I can’t even say how grateful I am.

I have a new friend. She is ill. It is progressive. Her husband seems so surprised that I come to see her. But I know how terribly lonely it is to be abandoned when you are ill. I have been there four times.

Blessings on the true friends.

Here is my sister’s blog. I remembered this post as “caged”, but her word is “trapped”.

https://e2grundoon.blogspot.com/2010/12/

My sister died of breast cancer in 2012.

Over The Rhine – The Laugh of Recognition

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bleed

even when your heart is broken, monday still comes, every week
you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, make a list of your work
no one in the bank, the post office, the store sees your life bleed

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For Ronovan Write’s Sijo Wednesday # 18: use regret.

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early wren

I recorded this in Wisconsin, with my phone. You may need to turn it up to hear it.

Recording of me exchanging songs with a wren.

I adore wrens. If I hear one and sing to it, it will sing back. Wrens change their songs all over the place. This one is very very patient with me, even though I am a terrible wren. At least I am trying, and this graceful musician is kind and encouraging, even though she is a professional.

I don’t think I ever saw the wren. I started chirping and trying to imitate the song when I heard it. Then I started recording. I don’t know how long we practiced together.

I am not good at wren songs. I am very good at chickadee, fairly good at eagle, and had a great blue heron back track and land in a tree when I tried that “BRAACCCKKKKK!” noise. Great Blue Herons sound like I imagine a pteradactyl sounded. There is an even more odd sounding bird, though. My daughter and I are walking around a small lake here and hear a monstrous sound. We stop and listen. We can’t identify it. We decide that it is not a cougar or a bear, and quietly walk forward, with caution.

It is a group of cormorants. It is twilight and there is a log sticking up out of the water. They are jockeying for position on the log. We think they are trying to roost for the night. As each one clambers up the water end, someone else is jostled and someone falls in the water. They are arguing in deep hoarse voices.

My daughter and I watch for a while. I don’t try to imitate the cormorants because I am afraid I will spook them. They are getting ready for bed. It is nearly dark so we walk on the the car and home.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: noises.

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beach finds

On my journey in March, I bought a small light box. I thought it would be wonderful for lighting up the clear chalcedony that we search for on the beaches here, and it is! I found nearly all of these, except for the very round very large one on the left. A friend gave me that one. It reminds me of the “Venus figurines”, carved between 25,000 and 15,000 BC.

Here is one of beaches where we search:

Just a few rocks on the beach.

Here is a find (taken by my friend):

Chalcedony pebble lit among other pebbles.

They light up when the sun is out!

Venus figurines: https://www.dkfindout.com/us/history/stone-age/stone-age-carvings/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_figurine

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chalcedony.