Tag Archives: outdoors

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Shoulder that pain

Disarmed

unarmed

armless

without my right hand

unhandy

unable to shoulder much

diminished

injured

wounded

tendonitis

inflamed

irritated

limited

reduced range of motion

careful

out of reach

guarded dancing

sinister takes over

left fills in

ow

______________

I am going through physical therapy for a right biceps tendonitis. I have to pay attention not to make it worse, all that automatic reaching for things. I wrote this thinking about the word disarmed.

I am listening to Chess Blues vol. 4 1960-1967.

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Qia and the monsters

Qia is three. She is scared.

“Don’t be scared or go to your room.”

Qia wants help. She is scared of the monster, FEAR, the giant monster, but her father won’t listen. She sniffles and tries, but she can’t stop crying. She goes to her room, because her father has turned his back. Her mother is drawing. They are busy. They don’t like it when she is scared.

FEAR is enormous and pushes into the room with her. She cries harder in her room with the door closed. No one can hear her now except FEAR. FEAR is large and has horrible drippy teeth and too many arms and keeps swatting at her. Qia gives up and lets FEAR swat her. She sits on the bed with her knees up and puts her head on her arms.

FEAR rages around her room.

After a while Qia is tired of crying. She lifts her head off her arms.

FEAR is smaller. Still bigger than her father, bigger than her mother, but just standing and looking at her. FEAR looks tired too.

Qia pats the bed beside her. FEAR hesitates and looks scared. Qia waits. FEAR shuffles over and sits beside her on the bed.

The room is very quiet. Qia finds a scrap of tissue and blows her nose. She looks sideways at FEAR.

FEAR’s head is down and FEAR seems to be crying. Qia reaches out and takes FEAR’s paw. One of the paws. There are a lot.

FEAR holds her hand tightly and then leans against her. Qia wiggles over a bit more to give FEAR room. FEAR sighs and then snuggles down onto the bed, massive drippy toothy head in Qia’s lap.

Qia strokes FEAR’s fur. It is very soft and dark purple.

FEAR is the first monster that Qia makes friends with. There are many more.

_________________

I was thinking about this story even before the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bugbear.

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Soup of tears

It’s time to write an ending to a story.
Let go of those calling me word twister.
The ending is dark, sad, devoid of glory.
The one who named me twister was my sister.
She has been dead a decade. I still miss her
except for the calls of money gone awry.
The cousins whitewash her and call me twister;
past time for me to gently say goodbye.
The small bird of hope has sung for ten long years.
She lives even on crumbs of cruel spite.
She sings in spite of no respite from tears.
Quietly in day or night, in dark or light.
The hope bird flutters: she’s waited years.
I release her now and I drink a soup of tears.

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Blessings on friends and chains

I went to Portland to meet my daughter, when she was up visiting friends. I stayed with one friend for two nights and then picked up my daughter and took her to another friends’ house. They currently have an empty garage apartment.

My daughter was supposed to fly out Thursday, but the 10.8 inch snow dump happened on Wednesday night. My friends are on this road that is mostly gravel and steeper than it looks in this picture.

The tracks that you see are driveway. The line in the trees is the road.

My friend has a pickup and chains and left for work at 6:30. My daughter and I put my chains on my Scion, and tried the hill. We blew the left chain off twice and the right one was mostly off as well.

That was probably a good thing because her plane was cancelled and there were accidents all over town.

We spent 2 hours and 30 minutes on hold with the airline and got her rescheduled for Saturday at 11:30.

She left the next morning with my friend in his truck. He dropped her at the metro and she stayed with friends who live close to the airport and are on the metro line.

My friends and I tried my chains again on Saturday morning. B blew one chain off too and we figured that a link had to be locked in a certain way. He drove up the driveway and we followed in the truck. He drove along the road until we were down to where chains were not needed. I thanked them all and headed out. Down the road a little there were three more abandoned vehicles: a truck with chains on and two cars. There were still patches of ridged ice on the 405 bridge. It took from 10 am to 12:22 to get back to Washington State! So hooray for chains and friends!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chains.