Sol Duc is quite a cat. The other morning I let her into the fenced back yard. I went back in to get my tea.
There is a knock at the front door. I open it and there is Sol Duc. “Meow!” which I hear as “Mom, I’m not supposed to be in front of the house without you.”
She comes in and I take my tea to the back. Oh.
Yes, I see the problem. She went into the neighbor’s yard and then around to the front. But she didn’t run off, she knocked. Apparently the storm was pretty hard on the fence.
This morning, after two days of rain, there were lots of small frogs singing to the sunrise in the man made run off space across the street. There is about a foot of water in it and the small frogs were all singing to their true loves. They continued to sing as the sun rose. Guess they better make hay while the pond is present, or something like that.
Sol Duc is a tough cat and smart. I think she still misses Elwha too, especially when I am at work, but she is careful not to run off.
The sky is bigger here than in Washington, at least, it seems bigger than on the Olympic Peninsula. It’s the lack of trees. Yes, there are mesas, but they are on the edges of Grand Valley and have very minimal foothills and then just go UP. I am enjoying the amazing cloud formations here. Maybe it’s also that often the clouds at home feel like they are two feet above the roof instead of way up in the sky.
Cee is getting better, so Cee, this sky is for you!
Yesterday we had an amazing thunderstorm with heavy rain and hail and water pouring under the front door of the clinic. The sidewalk must be tilted the wrong way. There were flood warnings and I waited until it calmed down a bit before driving home.
I like the sky, weather I am in Port Townsend or here. (Yes, wordplay on purpose).
I admire this orange sculpture outside the local library and then realize that it’s useful. Bike tools and a pump, in a central location and orange too! Very nice! I like it up against the darker orange of the building.
I’ve been haunting the library about twice a week, taking out piles of books. A new friend has also lent me a kindle, to read all of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Penric and Desdemona series. And what else will I find in it? It is like exploring someone’s bookshelves!
I have managed to acquire a few books and I am now watching for Little Free Libraries to pass the ones that I have read on to someone else.
We have fight or flight for the sympathetic nervous system state, when we are ramped up, aggressive, go getters, all that stuff. We need a term for the parasympathetic nervous system state, the relaxed one. So far I’ve come up with lie low and flow. Other suggestions? I welcome them! We need more lie low and flow and glow and say no and ho, ho, ho in the world. What puts you in that state? Knitting? Stupid cat videos? Bugs Bunny? A bubblebath? Watching toddlers? What makes you laugh and yawn and relax and lets all the tension flow out and sink or float away?
In clinic I am seeing a wide age range. Most of the younger ones, say, under 60, look a bit shell shocked. I think this is still from the pandemic and wars and political nastiness. The over 60 crowd seems to not care as much. They’ve been through it, they know people die, they know bad stuff happens.
A friend and I were talking about pandemics and he pointed out that HIV and AIDS was a pandemic too. So we are on track for two pandemics per century. The younger folk do not remember the HIV and AIDS pandemic and how frightening it was. Right before that started, some doctors proclaimed that infectious disease had been conquered by medicine. Um, RONG RONG RONG! Boy did they eat THOSE words. And early in that pandemic, no one knew what to believe, what was happening, how to stay safe, and the communication from the medical establishment changed very fast. I wonder if the people who were young adults and older in the 1980s were less surprised by the Covid-19 Pandemic and all the rumors and confusion. Yep, seen it before.
I am not sure how to help the younger shell shocked looking folks. Colorado is a bit tough and manly and consequently there is not a huge amount of resources for emotional health. Yesterday I asked if we have anyone who does neuropsychiatric testing and the answer I got was “I don’t know.” I will dig around today but did not find it on the internet. I have found neuropsych testing hugely helpful for traumatic brain injuries, post brain surgery, and to sort out unusual learning and memory styles. One woman had a brain tumor removed. Her memory was affected. She could remember things that she wrote down and read, but not things that she only heard. No one had given her the report to read. They only told her, so she did not remember it. At least, that was the story. I gave her the report and said, “Read it. And tell your family. And if you are on the phone, take notes.”
Ok, now I should get ready for work, though I want to lie low and watch a silly cat video.
Rocks! I have more pictures of rocks than you can shake a stick at! Double meaning here: those rocks are at my home and the rock is home to barnacles and all sorts of other creatures. The seagulls like it too.
Many of the yards here have weed cloth and then rocks. Sometimes this surrounds a patch of grass and sometimes it doesn’t. There are lots of early morning automatic sprinklers.
This morning my cat Sol Duc encountered a toad in our yard. This is the first toad she has met. She was quite interested but was not sure what to do with it. It hopped when she sniffed it or when she poked it with a paw. I thought it was not going to turn out well for the toad but then the sprinklers came on. The toad had a reprieve.
The photograph is another yard. These people are creative with their rocks!
The first picture is taken by my iphone. I have already posted the real last on the card, the rose bush from a few days ago, so this is the last unposted photograph. Is that cheating? Oh, well.
The second is from my Panasonic Lumix FZ 150, taken two weeks ago on my hike. This is on the way down. I was tired by then! Altitude + 4.5 miles, whew.
On Friday in the morning I took notes on paper. I was attending a conference on diabetes on Zoom. There are three new things added to the diabetes guidelines. It is now impossible to do a visit about diabetes and actually talk to the human being who has diabetes. We’ll be too busy doing the stupid checklists.
The personnel person stopped by. I said I was taking notes. “On PAPER? You are killing me!”
“Ok. I will use yarn this afternoon.” I drove home and got my knitting and worked on a sock in the afternoon. All the clinics were having a slow day. I guess the kids are getting out of school and everyone is feeling good. Or panicked.
I retain as much information knitting as I do taking notes. Tactile-auditory learner and the controlled fidgeting of knitting helps me stay awake, retain information, and produce socks and others items. I wear the socks more than I reread the notes.
I still like paper. I keep a paper journal. I wanted notes from the most complex lecture. The new medicines are jockeying for position but right now there are different indications for each one, so it’s rather confusing. They said that Type II Diabetes takes two hours daily to manage “correctly”. And that Type I and Type II on insulin take 3 or more. We are supposed to check for Diabetes Distress, which is not depression, exactly. I think I need to be checked for Guideline Distress and Contact Diabetes Distress, sigh. At least the Diabetes Distress speaker thought we should talk to the patient, though I think the talking should have been long before that. Medicine in the US is a mess.
I used the back of the clinic schedules for notes. I do print it out daily. It’s to try to run on time. What time am I supposed to see the patient, but they can be up to 7 minutes late and then the medical assistant still has to “room” them (yes, room has been verbed). Then I can go see them. So the theoretical starting time and the actual starting time can vary quite a bit. I don’t feel bad about being twenty minutes late if I didn’t get to go in the room with the last patient until twenty minutes late. Maybe a no show will let me catch up. Or not.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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