Tag Archives: Beloved

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Surreal surroundings

It was so gorgeous up on Hurricane Ridge yesterday! I think the wildflowers are surreal: whole mountainsides of wildflowers and the more you look, the more different ones you see. I am just starting to learn their names.

https://www.nps.gov/olym/planyourvisit/visiting-hurricane-ridge.htm

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: surreal.

I think the orange flower is a paintbrush, but it is not showing up here, on the wildflower identification site.

Another site: https://www.intangibility.com/inw/Wildflowers/Indian-Paintbrush.html

If anyone can identify it more closely, let me know!

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louche lips sink ships

At Fort Worden, the lighthouse was open on Sunday! I went up. A kind docent took the photograph of me with my camera. The lighthouse has a Fresnel lens.

Here is the information on Fresnel Lenses:

And views from the top, towards the southwest:

View west:

I think the view DOWN was the scariest!

https://www.pointwilsonlighthouse.org/

You can visit too!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: louche!

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cold water

The first picture is two swimmers on December 21, 2021. I declined to join them!

A male wigeon at Kai Tai Lagoon, March 2022.

More ducks at Kai Tai Lagoon, March 2022.

Some really expert swimmers having a rest, off East Beach, Marrowstone Island, March 2022.

And a video of another expert swimmer hanging out by the Port Townsend Ferry Dock, June 2022.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: SWIM.

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Defiance

Ok, this is a beautiful and romantic song, and yeah, George Strait is pretty.

And then there’s the Offspring. Singing Self Esteem. Guess which I like better.

The Offspring: defiance and singing about all sorts of things that we don’t talk about: “The more we suffer the more we really care!” Some of my patients needed to listen to this song. Often the mom, with a spouse and three children, who was taking care of all of them but not herself. “Who takes care of YOU?” I would ask. “No one,” some moms would say. “Look. There are FIVE people in your family. You are one of them. You deserve the same level of care that the rest of them are getting. I want you to include yourself in the people you take care of.” “BUT” “NO BUTS. If you don’t, then you are setting expectations for your children: the boys that a wife will take care of them and the girls to be walked on. Is that what you want?” “NO.” “Change it.” They often would, slowly but surely.

And The Offspring are further my heroes because of this song: Opioid Diaries. Ok, a punk band telling opioid overuse people to get help. MY HEROES! Thank you Offspring!!! It’s not easy to watch but wait until the ending and what if offers. I treated opioid overuse for the last 12 years in my small family practice clinic along with everything else: diabetes, hypertension, whatever. I never felt threatened or frightened, but some of that is because I grew up in an alcohol family. I recognize addiction. Reminding my of my parents is not a good sign. And I had to learn boundaries at home first. This is an uncomfortable video to watch but to me it is beautiful, because it offers hope.

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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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huge thanks to Trinity

The Summertime Singers had our tenth concert in twelve years last night at Trinity United Methodist, in Port Townsend, Washington.

And here it is, a video of the concert:

Summertime Singers – 2022

Trinity United Methodist hosts the Thursday Candlelight Concerts monthly. In September KPTZ will resume live broadcasts of the concert. Half of the contributions last night went to Jumping Mouse, the counseling center for children age 2 to 12.

Many thanks to Trinity United and to the folks who came out! And to Colleen and John, our directors, and Helen, our pianist. And a special thanks from me to Sidney, for some very timely voice lesson help!

Enjoy the concert and thanks to the church for posting it on their website!

The buck was right across the street on Tuesday, right before our dress rehearsal. I parked there and got out before I saw him. He didn’t mind. He continued to eat the hydrangeas. Yum.