Category Archives: wordplay

by

Wordplay

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is protagonist.

Sol Duc is ready to go outside in the dark and explore.

So there is also an antagonist.

I looked up contagonist and that’s a word too, though I haven’t seen it used much.

Agonist is a word too.

So if the heroine of a story is not a pro, is she an amatuagonist?

Sol Duc doesn’t care. “I’m a cat and I am always the protagonist.”

by

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.

by

Slack tide

Slack tide is the time when the tide is not going out nor coming in. When it stops. It doesn’t mean the water is quiet because there is still wind and weather. But sometimes it is quiet, as if the ocean is holding its breath.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: slack.

by

Instrument tetris

Both of my children play violin and I play flute and then my daughter starts viola in ninth grade and you start with a small one. We had multiple cases that were falling hazards and tripping hazards. What to do with them?

Our solution years ago: my daughter and I take a violin in its’ case to the Antique Company in Hadlock. The owners import furniture from England. We walk around and try fitting the violin case in to the tall cases until we find the right one. Hooray! The violins and small violas and flutes and quena and ocarinas and dulcimer are contained! And now my office medical books that I kept reside on the lowest shelf and I still pull them out.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt yesterday: tetris.

by

Speckled and striped

I am Elwha. Mom is talking to herself again. She’s arguing about whether I am striped or specked. I say, “Mom, I am CAT!” but sometimes she doesn’t listen. She has been giving us a little catnip daily and after I roll and sniff it, I don’t care what she calls me.

She has put the stick up in the kitchen again. I wonder if it is because it’s so cold? We still want to go outside, with the silly leash and harnesses, but the dark is here and it rains and blows. When the light is present, so are the awful cars. I am not spending as much time outside. I do hope for the light to increase again soon. I can feel that it will, but I am not sure exactly when.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: speckled.

by

eXpress

Oh, the X the X, twitterpate, twittery twit
eXcreble, eXcoriating, to woo to wit
makes me want to eXit all that sh- bit
eXpensive, eXpress away from the eXcreble twit

I never did twat in the twitter and that
makes me eXcellently happy, an eXpat
eXtend compassion to the eXcreble eX-hat
eXhort him eXpressly to eXit like that

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: eXpress.

I took the photograph in Florence in September.