Category Archives: wordplay

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Letters

I went to the post office Monday. I am in a rental house, and get packages every so often for the previous renter. This time I realized at the post office that one was misdelivered and was to the house next door. Ooops. But the post office said they would redeliver it.

I love snail mail letters. I have colored pens and stickers and stamps. The whole thing makes my inner child very happy. Once I got a letter from my mother-in-law saying that my letters are national treasures! I kept that letter.

I haven’t written myself a letter, but maybe I should. What would I write?

I sent the envelope above out, but it came back. I will be driving home soon and wrote to a friend on the way, but I must have the wrong address. I bought the stamps here. The stamp pads were expensive, though, so I only got two!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: post office.

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One fell out

This is not as static as it looks in the still photograph. Not at all! This is a happening rock!

There were ten in the bed and the little one said “Roll over! Roll over!”
So they all rolled over and one fell out

There were eight in the bed and the little one said, “Roll over, roll over!”
So they all rolled over and some fell out,

There were three on the rock and the big one said, “Roll over, roll over!”
So they all rolled over and one fell out.

There were two on the rock and the big one said, “The tide is coming in, and we are going to swim.”

These were taken in May of 2023 from Marrowstone Island and the order is reversed. As the tide goes out the island appears and the seals start hopping out to rest, digest and enjoy the sun.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: argument.

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Touch

Think of the things the thumb and fingers have built
Hunt and home and hearth and healing and hearts
The eyes to look, the brain to decide, down the body tilts
This is the stone I choose to pick up, and toss, or collecting starts.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: thumb.

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Goals

Are they called goals in cornhole?

Sol Duc has a goal.

Warm belly fur. I am not sure she is going to like going home. When we first drove up the Olympic Penisula, my daughter was two. It was three pm on New Year’s Eve, getting dark, and we were on 101 with the very tall trees blocking most of the light. “Where sun, mom? Me no can see sun.” Sol Duc will probably ask the same thing: Where did the sun go?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: goal.

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Masks and selfs

I call a friend yesterday and sing, “Happy Day Before Your Birthday to You”. It sounds silly. She has just gotten Covid and this cheers her up.

She is telling me about her summer and about a class at a camp. Some for adults and some for children, but one where people really dropped their masks and just got to be themselves.

What identity is your deepest self? She is talking about her nine year old self. I think mine is more like four and rebellious and skeptical of adults, adulthood and all of their rules. I don’t think I am ever out of touch with this identity, though I don’t let it talk out loud in clinic. Mostly. A rebellious four year old informed by medical school and years of experience is a pretty frightening thought, isn’t it? Or the basis for a great cartoon.

That part of me is very observant and quite smart. It does not care what we are supposed to see or the cues people give. Growing up in an alcohol household, it looks for what people do not say. This can be terribly helpful in clinic and also a bit weird. It is body language and tone of voice and what questions a person shies away from answering and the puzzle pieces that do not fit.

Last week I see a small child with her parents for vomiting and coughing and fever. I am interviewing the child and asking if things hurt. “Do your ears hurt?” I ask. She shakes her head no. I point to my throat next and she nods. Yes, that part hurts. Her toes do not. I include toes or something silly to find out if the child is saying yes to all of it. I tell the parents that we will do a strep test, that mostly people don’t cough with strep except when they do. The strep is positive. My medical assistant grumbles, “They didn’t tell me that,” but I think the parents were more worried about the vomiting and she may not have complained about her throat.

Are the masks we wear always bad? I don’t think so. I think it is frustrating if we believe our mask or never ever get to drop it. There is some formality to my role in clinic and I tend to get more formal when I am worried about someone. That has been interpreted as anger or brusqueness, but it isn’t. I am wearing a real mask with all patients because we are seeing at least one person with Covid every week. The literal mask does not help me connect with people, but sometimes I can anyhow. I have to take it off for the 90 year olds because most of them are hard of hearing and lip reading helps.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: identity.

I hiked the Beaver Brook Trail this weekend with my daughter.

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Favorites

Let’s see: I am going with two favorite writers.

My favorite female author is Laura Ingalls Wilder. My favorite male author is Walt Kelly.

Louis Carreas wrote about how descriptions can be cages, here. WordPress won’t let me comment on his blog (Hi, Lou!), saying that I have to be logged in. Even when I AM logged in. Ah well, maybe the AI has a sense of humor and is messing with me. Anyhow, his comments make me think of the DSM V, the list of behavioral health symptoms defining them into disorders, fifth version. We humans make them up, these lists. My daughter pointed out years ago, “We make up all the words.” It’s all an effort to communicate and we make it all up.

Walt Kelly is my favorite master of playing with words and word silliness. One time Howland Owl and Churchy are trying to make a bomb. They need a certain material. They have a small yew tree and a geranium. They both fall over and CROSS! Owl and Churchy dive for the floor. There is no explosion. Howland Owl says, “The natural born reason we didn’t git no yew-ranium when we crosses the li’l yew tree and the gee-ranium is on account of cause we didn’t have no geiger counter.” They decide against an A-bomb and put a honey bee hive in a shoebox, making a quite effective B-bomb.

Laura Ingalls Wilder starts the book about her youngest years explaining that she tries to be good but she just can’t be as good as her sister Mary. There are ways they are supposed to behave and she fights with her sister and misbehaves on Sunday and runs around. They are also not supposed to talk about certain feelings, but the feelings show through the events. When I read the books to my son and daughter, I found myself a bit appalled and editing the bits about the blackface minstrel show that they do and about Laura’s Ma talking about “dirty Indians”. Mrs. Wilder edited her life quite severely for those books, but I too chafed under the cage of society’s rules and what feeling I was and was not allowed to express.

Now there are series based on Laura’s mother, grandmother and great grandmother. I like them though the feelings aren’t as authentic to me. Not quite. My daughter loved the books about Laura’s mother and I think is like her. My daughter objects to Anne’s behavior in the first book of the Anne of Green Gables series. “No one is like that!” she says. I mention a classmates name, who is very very extroverted. “Hmmm,” says my daughter, “Ok, she is like that.”

The photograph is from 1965. My maternal grandmother, me and my sister. I do not know who took it.

And a favorite carol:

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: favorite writer.

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Coping or manipulation?

I see someone in clinic with a difficult boss.

This brought up work stories. Now, are these coping skills or manipulation or a bit of both? You decide.

Long ago I work in a lab at the National Institutes of Health. We are super busy and doing a lot of overtime and have some media pressure as well. Our boss gets us together and gives us hell, about making mistakes. I am annoyed, because I’ve been really careful. I stew. I write a letter, what I think he should have said, which is telling us all great job, you’ve worked super hard, we are under pressure and also we need to not make mistakes. I circulate it to the four other lab techs, who enjoy it. The lab cheers up a bit. Eventually I get brave and give it to the boss. He likes it and reads it to everyone, who try not to laugh. A year after I leave the lab, I visit, and he has that letter up on his bulletin board.

Long ago I am made chief of staff at a hospital. My goal is to finish the monthly meeting in an hour. I have two senior doctors who always blow up about something in the meeting. I decide to be proactive and go to each one before the meeting and prime them. I pick a topic, say I am worrying about it, and what do they think? They each then blow up in the meeting, but now they have no opposition so there is no brawl. I prime them about something that is not really controversial. I do get the meetings done in an hour.

One year I go to the lake with my family. My children are small. My father has been drinking heavily. I call ahead and say, “Will you treat our tent site like my house and not come there if you are drinking?” “You don’t own the lake land,” says my father. “We don’t have to come.” I reply. He agrees not to drink at our tent site.

He is angry, though, and pretty much won’t speak to me. I ask if he would come to a family sing at my site. He says no. I think about it for a while and ask my cousin to hold a sing at her cabin. My father agrees to that, not knowing that I am the instigator. He is happy at it because he’s said no to me and yes to her, and I am happy too, because I love to sing and sing with him.

My father was one of eight people to start Rainshadow Chorale in 1997. I sang with him in the chorale from 2000 until the year he died.

Where is the line between manipulation and coping with a difficult person?

I think this is a time travelogue, so let it be my Ragtag Daily Prompt for today.

The photograph is of my father in 2012. He died in 2013.

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Tinker, tailor

Tinker brought up this rhyme for me:

Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief,
Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.

It turns out that another version is

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor,
Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief

And I had forgotten AA Milne’s version called Cherry stones:

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,
Or what about a cowboy, policeman, jailer, engine driver, or a pirate chief?
Or what about a ploughman or a keeper at the zoo,
Or what about a circus man who lets the people through?
Or the man who takes the pennies on the roundabouts and swings,
Or the man who plays the organ or the other man who sings?
Or what about the rabbit man with rabbits in his pockets
And what about a rocket man who’s always making rockets?
Oh it’s such a lot of things there are and such a lot to be
That there’s always lots of cherries on my little cherry tree.

Now I’m going to have to play with a version with some current jobs:

What about a tweeter, a twerker, a medical AI?
Influencer, programmer, cooker of meth highs?

Oops, that might not be the children’s version.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tinker.

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Outdoor feed

My daughter, her housemate and her housemate’s parents came Friday night. We all went to Arches National Park yesterday morning. This is part of the Parade of Elephants.

This morning we went to the Colorado National Monument again.

My daughter and I both practically backed away from this optical illusion. CUT THAT OUT! NOT FUNNY!

Anyhow, the outdoors is my feed, nourishing and amazing all the time.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: feed.