Tag Archives: hot

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foxglove

The source of digoxin and digitalis. I am interested when people tell me they don’t take prescription medicines and that they only take “natural” medicines. Meaning pills. Pills do not grow on trees or bushes and are made by human beings. How exactly is the person defining “natural”?

My father said that anything a human could think up was “natural”. “Though that does not mean safe.” Think wingsuits and basejumping.

Digoxin and digitalis are used less than in the past, because there are many other medicines to choose from to control heart rate. However, they are still used because digoxin is one of the very few rate controlling medicines that does NOT lower blood pressure. Most of the others do lower blood pressure. When nothing else works or is tolerated, the cardiologist may sigh and say, ok, start digoxin. It is a tricky medicine because levels that get too high are toxic and the dose is different for each person and the dose must be lowered as kidney function changes with age. We still use it, though.

About one third of prescription medicines originate from a plant source like this, where the plant actually makes the active substance. Plants and animals and humans evolved together. We have deer all over town and they do not eat the foxglove. They love roses but stay away from foxglove.

I am seeing advertisements for a book to make your own medicines at home. I have not bought it. I would stay away from any recipe with foxglove: I want a lab to test to get the dose exactly right.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day. Heh, it turned into an essay of the day too. Wordy, wordy, wordy.

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hot weather flower

Yesterday the downtown bank recorded a temperature of 87! And this is after six months of seeing the sun about once every two weeks, and temperatures mostly in the 40s and 50s.

The beaches have been EMPTY. The delightful Salish Sea gets to a high of 55 degrees, so anyone who swims is brave. But yesterday the beaches were FULL again! Tourists and locals, summer is here! The water temperature yesterday was 9 degrees C, which is 48 F. Cold for swimming.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

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beatnik bathtub

Ok, we are having the northwest heat wave and I am on the Olympic Peninsula.

I know LOTS of heat tricks, because I went to high school in Alexandria Virginia. And slept in the upstairs front bedroom, no air conditioning.

So yesterday I start using more of my heat tricks.

The silliest was the bathtub. I pull the old bathtub I’d gotten from a man two blocks away who was renovating his house away from the fence. I rinse it out and get a tub plug, wrong size, and plastic wrap. Fixed. I fill about half way with water, which is delightfully cold, and then get the fountain. I got the fountain at a garage sale for $5.00. I plug it in and instant fountain. I happily stick my feet in it.

I send a picture to a friend, who responds “Redneck wading pool.”

“No, no.” I respond. “I was raised by beatniks. It’s a beatnik bathtub fountain.”

He laughs. “Ok, yeah.”

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in praise of opposititional defiance

I am oppositional defiant.

I can and will argue about anything. ANYTHING.

And guess what? I can and will argue either side.

In fact, when I am sick there is only one person to argue with. Myself.

So that is what I do. Autopilot. I think of something and then instantly question it. Is it true, do I really agree with it, what arguments are on the other side. Sometimes there is an angel on one side and the devil on the other. Sometimes it’s two scientists or politicians or I’m arguing the male viewpoint as far as I can versus the female as far as I can.

One time my mother in law was visiting when my son was around nine. She looked out the window. My son was pacing back and forth in front of the garage.

“I am worried about him.” said my mother in law

“Why?” I said, glancing out at him.

“He’s bored.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Just LOOK at him pace.”

“He’s not bored.”

She was shocked and slightly outraged.

I said, “Go stand by him.”

She looked confused but she did it.

After a bit she came back inside. “You are right, he’s not bored.”

Because, you see, I knew what he was doing when he paced there. He was narrating a story out loud. It usually involved spaceships, dinosaurs, other planets and explosions. He did sound effects. It was the opposite of boring. It was very very exciting.

When I needed his attention I would say his name. If that didn’t work, I would start adding sound effects. I would add explosion noises and squeaks and dinosaur calls at inappropriate times. He would stop and glare at me.

I have to say that now I am not surprised that he was a late reader. I am actually surprised that the teacher could talk through the explosions and dinosaurs and spaceships at all….

Anyhow, pick a controversial topic. Argue one side of it. Then switch positions and argue the other side. If you can’t, you need more information from the other side. Do a search on google. This will confuse the hell out of your feed, which knows very well that you are not a fan of oil drilling or hunting elk. But it’s GOOD to confuse your feed, it needs to know that you are a versatile thoughtful very smart human being.

And have a great time arguing with yourself. Be sure to put the blue tooth in your ear so that no one calls the people with nets to take you away…..