Tag Archives: build

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Sad about the cows

The first photograph is Sol Duc. She is lying on my jacket to object to and obstruct me going to work. She has learned the new schedule, but things are a little different. In the three weeks we were gone, the night time temperatures have dropped into the 20s, so it is frozen outside. Yesterday it warmed to a high of 53 but not for long. It is dark in the morning and dark at night when I get home and we have not been walking with the harness and leash as much. Brrr, cold. We had a long walk yesterday at 10 am because it was my administrative day and I was caught up.

Sol Duc can’t find her pet toad any more. I think the toads have dug in for the winter and there are fewer and fewer insects. I think she is a bit bored. I’ve been building cardboard box puzzles for her, with the cat food ball inside. She has to roll the ball around to get the dry food to fall out. Maybe now she misses Elwha a bit, too. My work days are a bit long, leaving at 7:00 am and sometimes not home until 6:00 pm. Right now I have to drive to the other end of the valley.

The second picture is this morning’s sunrise. Gorgeous, yes? But that is the field across the street from us and that changed while we were gone too. They are building roads, all of the wild plants are gone, and it is staked all over and has large machines. And kitty corner, to the southwest, no more cows! The cows are gone! Are they inside for the winter or really gone? I think that they are really gone, because I see cows in other fields. The hay barn is still in use, but the cows have been moved. The city of Grand Junction is building and encroaching on the farms. We are right on the western edge of Grand Junction. No more early morning roosters, either.

I am not sure how to tie this to the Ragtag Daily Prompt, circular. Sol Duc is pretty circular when she curls up. The earth and the sky are circular. Emotions circle, happy to sad to surprised to worried and back. I am a little sad about the loss of the field and the cows, sigh, but happy Saturday to you.

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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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Decoration

This is one of our wonderful old buildings downtown. The front and one side are enhanced with the windows and trim and decoration. The side facing the water is plain bricks but still has the windows. I think both sides have their beauty.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: enhance.

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The next stage

It is hard to build a new life after pneumonia number four.

Running my own clinic and seeing patients and keeping track of a business for eleven years, along with two children, now adults done with college and masters and jobs, I did not have an enormous amount of time.

During covid, I started beach walking with a person. Two years into covid, they say, “I have to get back to my real life.” Oh. They say, “You need your own life.” Um, yes, and clearly they are not in it, by their choice. That was a year into pneumonia four and I was still on oxygen. The person bailed. I was a detour to get them through covid. Ugly, but I am trying to learn everything I can from them. About myself and who and what to avoid!

WordPress and the blogging community helps sustain me through this! I can write when I am ill (at least so far) and when the pandemic closed down. I am so encouraged that people contribute from all over the world. A small candle of hope.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to do a limited clinic or not. I am hoping so.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting to know more people outside clinic and going to live music and dancing and doing open mikes. I am doing the poetry open mikes. A friend in a band says, “But you don’t come to mine!” “That’s a music open mike.” “We need poetry,” he says. So I’ve gone twice and it has been really fun and I am getting to know that community as well. Last Thursday someone said my poems are weird. “I don’t mean bad, just from a different angle.” Meaning unusual, I think. Perspective.

I have been here for 23 years. I know many people in the music community from singing in chorus all those years, I have a church community, I know many people in the dance community, my father and I were in the Wooden Boat community, I have both good and not so good connections in the medical community. The legal community knows both my children, through Mock Trial competitions. I was in the Rotary for ten years and that is another wonderful community. The exchange students going all over the world and people giving back also give me hope!

Suddenly I am busy. I will have to start choosing between things. I still have the aftereffects of Covid-19. I had mild chronic fatigue before it and still do. I think I am stuck with that, so I have to build in rest and quiet time. At least, physical quiet time. My brain doesn’t really do quiet, but that is ok.

Hooray for every day and for building the next stage.

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I took the photograph this week from Point Defiance, Mount Tahoma, aka Rainier.

Limited:

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found

Going through boxes, I found this photograph of my father, Malcolm Ottaway, working on the Cornell cycloton. He engineered and built the stand, which had to be mobile but very very stable. I suppose it is called something other than a stand, but he died in 2013 so I can’t ask him. The photo would be from 1964 or 1965.

I framed it. What was the excuse for not framing it before?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: excuse.

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needle and thread

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: needle.

The Great Port Townsend Kinetic Sculpture Race takes place every fall. The costumes and the sculptures, human powered, on land, in the water, through mud, are amazing and fabulous. I think the racers are mechanics, seamstresses, engineers, divinely silly, skilled in wheels, gears, needle and thread, glitter glue, duct tape and teddy bear placement. The costumes are amazing and the mobile sculpture transports are even more amazing.