Category Archives: wordplay

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Design and build

The Great Port Townsend Bay Kinetic Sculpture Race has some serious designers. I don’t know if they use a forge, but the sculptures have to go in the 52 degree water and come out a few blocks away. They have to move in the water, not just float. They have to have functional brakes, since they go over a significant hill and they are human powered. They have to get through the mudbog somehow.

Some go for power and some try to go light. This one looked the lightest this year.

Many have been in more than one race and the racers and their support teams are happy to lift the hood and explain.

The two bundles under the hood are lifejackets and floats for the water course. They have to carry all the parts on the sculpture. Each team can have support personnel. Our local school kids’ STEM groups had a Maker’s Fair near the water course. We have a group that has made an underwater robot to fish out lost crab pots. If the pot’s line is lost, crabs and other creatures can be trapped inside to die. The robot helps to fish out the trash that traps creatures.

Wikipedia lists ten locations for Kinetic Sculpture Races. Ours has been going for 35 years. Will someone forge a new vehicle that we start using daily? I hope so.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: forge.

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Storm tossed

The word tethered makes me think of the year and a half on oxygen. I had a standing concentrator for in the house. This means that I have oxygen tubing following me on three floors. I had to have connectors and I got caught on everything. I tripped over it. I wondered why it wasn’t helping and discovered the tubing was unplugged. The kittens chewed holes in it.

The sea plants are tethered too, to rocks, to grow up from the deep. I think this looks like a distressed stranded mermaid. Poor thing, her rock, her foundation has been thrown on shore by a storm. She can’t get home. I took this in May 2021, when I was still on continuous oxygen.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tethered.

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Sexually active

At a clinic visit this week the Medical Assistant screens me. “Are you sexually active?”

I say, “Um, what do you mean?”

“Are you sexually active?”

“Um, I do not have a partner.” By now, I really want to laugh.

She still looks confused. “You are not sexually active.”

“Ok.” I try not to giggle. Apparently her question series does not cover um, solo sexual activity and I resist telling her about the downtown sexual health and toy store. The new multispeed, multipattern suction toys are, well, enlightening and INSPIRING and EXPLOSIVE.. Or, um, something. Snort.

Let’s just study the dome. This is from Venice and tells the story of Adam and Eve.

I have sent a message to my physician saying that they may want to rephrase the questions. “Do you have any sexual partners?” would be more enlightening as far as sexually transmitted disease risk. Heh. The whole thing cracked me up. My blood pressure was still 108 over 70. Ha, so there, heart disease. My English/Scots father’s family is adapted to tobacco and alcohol and my father ran a low blood pressure even with 55 years of unfiltered Camels in his lungs.

Heh.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dome. This is the Basilica San Marcos, which has multiple domes. This one tells the story of Adam and Eve. I now want to paint one of my ceilings. The bathrooms have too much moisture. I suspect this will not enthuse future realtors.

Alone and lonely are not the same thing.

Fantasy is good.

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Farm tour

I realize that tractable is not about tractors, but I still am thinking about tractors and the Farm Tour. I went to five farms and it was really fun. Not many tractors at the farms I went to. Beautiful Arabian horses at one.

The pig farm is quite wonderful. Lots of piglets. This mom maybe is having a nursing break.

These were only five days old.

And there were sheep and flowers and chickens. And skulls, too.

I’m not sure what was going on with the skulls. I did not get any pictures of tractors. I don’t think the large pigs are very tractable, but they are interested in their visitors.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tractable.

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Choices

At high tide there was mild turmoil in waiting to see Saint Mark’s Basilica. Either wet shoes, or buy plastic covers, or remove your shoes and socks until you are at the church.

We took off shoes and socks until we were inside. Worth it!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: turmoil.

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Empty

Cupid shoots seven arrows from her quiver.
Eons of experience, she hits where she aims.
Six hit in my heart but the seventh in my liver.
Now I can’t eat gluten and wine gives me pains.
I wonder if hearts are like cats’ lives?
I think it’s seven but it might be nine.
The thought of more arrows gives me hives.
I’ve had enough of love to last through time.
I hope it’s seven and the arrows are done
And Cupid wanders by and fails to see me.
I’ll emulate Hestia and Artemis for fun
And Artemis’s hunt stays protective from the the trees.
The love of friends is enough for me.
An empty quiver will set me free.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: quiver. The statue is Galatea, in Port Townsend.

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Found

Barbie doctor is trying to interview the Get Real Girl about the origin of the missing part in front of her, but Elwha intervenes.

“Who, me?” says Elwha. “I am trying to help! I don’t eat Barbies or Get Real Girls!”

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: missing part.

The funny bit is that I knew right where this missing part was: on a dresser upstairs. It’s the rest of the doll that has gone missing.

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Barbie stole

The cats find this in my house and carry it around. I had Barbies in the 1970s. You can see the tag in this picture. Barbie/Mattel. The stole is made of rabbit fur with a nylon lining. Very 1970s, since I doubt Mattel would sell rabbit fur as a Barbie accessory now. The cats think it is fabulous.

The doll holding it is not a Barbie. It is a Get Real Girl, who has more normal proportions and normal feet. This one came with a backpack, hiking clothes and all she needs for camping. She is from the early 2000s. She’s better at driving the ambulance than the Barbies because her joints are much more fluid.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: stole.

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The Extroverted Feeler and Barbie

With all the fuss over the Barbie Movie, I am thinking about Barbie. This takes place in the 1990s. I wrote it in 2018.

When my extroverted feeler son is four, he announces that he wants a Barbie for Christmas. Hmmm, I think.

I tell my mother. She sends him a Barbie. Blonde hair to her ankles and in an itsy bitsy blue glitter bikini. My son names her Pocahontas.

Back to work in January. On the first day back to daycare, my son is searching for something. “Mom?”

I am rushing around getting ready for work.

“Where is my backpack?” He has a small pink backpack with shiny gems pasted on it. We moved from Portland, Oregon to Alamosa, Colorado. All the kids in the Portland parent run daycare insisted on pink jelly sandals, both girls and boys. My son has stopped wearing pink immediately when he goes to the Colorado daycare.

I find the backpack. He stuffs the Barbie in headfirst, satisfied. Hmmm, I think. Taking Barbie to daycare. I take him to daycare and then stand and watch. He is working the room. He goes to a girl, says “Look!” and holds the backpack so she can see inside.

That evening I ask him. “Who did you show the Barbie to?”

“I showed it to Anna and Marni and Becka and Marie,” he says.

“Did you show the Barbie to any boys?”

“Mom!” he says with scorn. “You don’t show Barbies to boys!”

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The Barbie ambulance opens out into a clinic. Twin one, on the Get Real Girl’s lap, has bright red cheeks. Probably parvovirus. Twin two in the cradle has no rash. If I had worn heels like this Dr. Barbie while working, I would have never made it through a day!