Tag Archives: love

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All home

My daughter and her significant other arrive two nights ago and we open packages and stockings yesterday morning. Lots of laughter and chocolate and much contentment. Now I have a climbing harness in pale green! We did not climb yesterday, I was too tired. We did go for a park walk on an old golf course and had a delicious dinner. It is lovely to all be gathered here and trading stories and jokes and family silliness.

Today I am up early. We will drive down to see my two aunts and my uncle. The great aunts and uncle to the kids. A very delight!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: contentment.

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Today and tomorrow and the day after

Good morning! I hope you are having a happy day today! I am up and having tea and reading and listening to music, waiting for the rest of the household. They may be a while.

I arrived at my son and daughter in law’s on Sunday. The glitch was that my son and I couldn’t find each other in the pick up area and got frustrated. Turns out that I was at National Airport and he was at Dulles, which does make it more of a challenge. I took my bags and hopped the metro out into Maryland, and they picked me up at the station. Whew.

We are talking, eating, wrapping things and climbing. We went to their climbing gym yesterday and I did a respectable job on some 5.6 and 5.7 climbs. Today my arms want to fall off. Last year my climbing style was panicked sloth. This year I am much better since I have been going to my climbing gym once a week. Arm muscles! How amazing!

We are going to continue wrapping today. My daughter and her boyfriend arrive late tomorrow so we aren’t going to tear paper off stuff until Friday morning. My inner little kid suggests that we unwrap today, wrap it back up, and do it AGAIN on Friday. This waiting frustrates her! Oh, well. No, dear, we aren’t going to do that.

Have a lovely today and tomorrow and day after tomorrow!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: today!

The photograph is Elwha looking up at the Christmas stick last year. I miss him!

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Austere choice

What could be more austere than rock?

Taken in Echo Canyon in the Colorado National Monument, Thanksgiving, 2024.

Austere choice

Why do I still feel sad when I think
that I am best off with my cat
and that I should eschew dating.
Why do I feel like I am rejecting love?
I don’t have that sort of love.
It’s not like I am rejecting anything.
I am rejecting looking for it.
I am rejecting active interest in a partner
other than my cat.
What is wrong with that?

I do not ever want to reject hope.
I am not trying to reject wanting.
Hope and want are the deep and terrible ache
for the Beloved. I do not reject that.
I am still open, Beloved, to what you send,
though getting more particular in middle age.
A writer says that he uses a pencil and a pad,
because no better tool has been invented.
I take the same approach to wanting love.
If the relationship is more work than my cat,
for less love, why bother? It seems silly
and until I go home to the Beloved,
so far, I am best off with my cat.

____________________________________________

The first thing Sol Duc does when we go out for a walk, is roll on the sun warmed dusty sidewalk. The house faces south.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: austere.

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Vision

What will peace look like? People
will still disagree often
but like my parents they will appreciate
evidence and science. They will listen
to each other with interest, with respect.
They will bet a penny or a quarter or a million
imaginary dollars and one will go to look up
the correct capital of Azerbaijan, while
the other argues that they MEANT back in 1478,
really, so they do not owe one million imaginary
dollars and they both start laughing again.

_______________________________

The photograph is of the ice in Echo Canyon, two days ago. Or maybe it is angels, waiting.

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Print or cursive?

My father’s father was a pressman and the head pressman when he was in Knoxville, Tennessee. This is back in the lead type times, when the type had to be set before printing the newspapers. Before they moved to Knoxville, they lived in Connecticut. My father said that my grandfather helped develop the four color process for the comics. My father would get the new comic books, Superman, straight off of my grandfather’s press. Too bad those were thrown out!

I started cursive in school in about fourth grade and I did not like it. I learned, but I thought it was ugly. My father knew how to write in italics. I liked italics much more and asked him to teach me. I adapted the capital letters to make them easier and then I wrote my papers in italics when we were not allowed to print. The teachers objected but I pointed out that we weren’t allowed to print in the papers, but it did not say, “No italics.” I imagine that some teachers found me difficult.

My cursive is still stuck in about fifth grade and I almost never use it.

Meanwhile fast forward. A law is passed in Washington State that prescriptions cannot be written in cursive. However, it does not say that we have to print. The same loophole. I usually printed prescriptions anyhow, so that the pharmacist could read it. I got compliments occasionally for printing in a legible way. I didn’t spell certain medicines correctly, but the pharmacists never seemed to care about that. Now it is all by fax and since Covid started, even the controlled substances go by fax.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: print.

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More dance

Now, here is some tricky twirling. The photograph was taken by Terry, in April 2023 at the Bishop Hotel. Tom had an injured ankle but we danced anyhow! I was very careful twirling because his balance was tricky, his foot was sticking out and I did not want to knock him over! I didn’t, and we both had a good time anyhow.

This is from March 31, 2023, right before the Swinging on the Sound dance weekend. Live band and lots of dancers warming up for the dance weekend.

My daughter called home from college at one point and said, “Mom! I love to TWIRL!” She was contra dancing and soon started swing dance and shag and other styles. I bought her dance shoes for her next back to school supplies. We bring shoes that we don’t wear outside, to protect the floors of old 1930s dance halls. We need leather or suede soles often so that we can twirl and slide!

Here is the band that Tom and I were dancing with: Jonathan Doyle and friend.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: twirl.

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Maps

I really like maps. I have a small hiking book for the area and a book of hikes. When I am riding in my daughter’s care, I admire a map of Colorado, a geologic highway map and shaded elevation map. My daughter says, “You gave that to me when I moved to Denver. Take it!” She doesn’t like extra stuff. Use it or lose it.

The geologic side fascinates me. It shows color coded zones of different rock formations and has some history. Rocks and mountains, delightful!

Some of the hikes here are also mountain bike trails and loop in all sorts of ways. I try to remember to photograph the map at the start of the hike, so that I can refer to it on my phone. Lots of hikes are out of the range of phone towers, so I won’t depend on GPS!

Grand Junction lies in the Grand Valley and runs mostly east/west along the Colorado River and Interstate 70. They have named the streets on a grid with letters and numbers. This has some odd charm: I live off of 21 and 1/2 road, which is 21 and 1/2 miles from the Utah border. There are some 1/4 and 3/4 roads too. The lettered roads start with A at Orchard Mesa. There is an F and 1/2 road. How fun! There is also a downtown switch, where suddenly the numbered roads go from 1 to 7 and drop out of the numbers set from the Utah border. There is an article explaining here.

The photograph is part of the Colorado Geologic Map. The altitude map is on the other side. Isn’t it pretty?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: guide.

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Who is there?

This is not a brilliant photograph, but it is interesting. This is taken from North Beach in 2022 with my cell phone. It was a very grey day and wet and we heard roaring. I imitate both animals and birds, so I roared back and tried to match the call. This is the response. These are sea lions and they can be enormous. The elders and biggest ones stopped and stuck their heads out, wanting to know who is there? Thankfully they did not come ashore, because the males can be 2.4 meters long (7.8 feet) and 390 kg (859 pounds). We did stop roaring, a bit intimidated. We had roared back at them other times. The sea lions are moving north, more information here.

I am trying to find time and energy to keep removing lots of old blogs and photographs to make room for the new. I could pay for more space, but then I have to keep paying for it, so I don’t want to. I have gone back and read my 2009 posts, no pictures, from the Mad As Hell Doctors trip and from writing elsewhere. I write more often with the Ragtag Daily Prompt, but the longer medical posts are intermittent.

Work has been interesting and I feel a bit off balance, because the plan is in flux and morphing. Right now I am in the same clinic Monday through Thursday, but at two different desks. I won’t be in this clinic for the rest of the assignment unless something changes. I don’t know where I will go next. Primary care has lost two providers in the six months I’ve been here, but I don’t know if that is an ongoing rate nor how many there are total.

My first job out of residency had a terrible turnover. I was fifth senior doctor out of fifteen in two years. That is a really really bad sign. By the end of the second year I was fairly sure that I would not be staying and that I could not change the culture. The three women doctors that I had joined had been trying for two years and one had already left! I was gone by the end of the third year.

And back to roaring with the sea lions. Here is Walt Kelly’s take on roaring, his poem Northern Lights.

Oh, roar a roar for Nora, for Nora in the night,
For she has seen aurora borealis burning bright.

A furore for our Nora! And applaud Aurora seen!
Where, throughout the Summer, has our borealis been?

_____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: grey.