Tag Archives: RDP

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Goal achieved!

I am Elwha, cat.

I achieved an item from my bucket list today! My first prey!

I am in the cat cage in the wild outside. Mother opens the window some days. It has been cold and wet, but I go out anyhow. This time I see movement. I freeze and slowly stalk it. My hunt is successful and I make my catch. I squeeze through the door and carry it to the kitchen.

I put it down. I hope it will run, but it is slow. Still alive, though. Mother notices and admires it. I would let her eat it. She doesn’t take it.

Mother is proud, too. I hear her tell the phone “Elwha caught his first worm!”

I taste the worm but I am not that hungry. I left it but it was gone later. Maybe mother got hungry after all.

I bet I can catch more for her!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bucket list.

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Rock surfaces

Happy Earth Day!

I walked North Beach twice this week and Marrowstone Island once so far this week. This is from North Beach yesterday. This rock makes me a little anxious because I think it will come down. It’s well above my head and is probably 5 feet by 5 feet. Bits of the cliffs fall and I do not want to be under them.

There is another, a little smaller, a bit further along. Those are not small trees on the top of the cliffs, so the scale becomes clearer.

Another of the huge rocks has been on the beach for a while. Look who is living on the surface, while the tides roll in and out. An amazing surface, right?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: surface.

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Refusing to yearn

Today I refuse categorically to yearn
I miss stupid things: that you rise early too
still this morning it’s annoying to learn
no one to talk to at the hour of stupid, no you
Impatient with my feelings, I wish you ill
hope you wake and want to whine and moan
hope you wake early and feel over the hill
but have to be quiet and grouse all alone
hope your mind buzzes like a hive of grumpy bees
while you spy on the internet and feel superior
hope you gather more facts piled like logged trees
and wonder why the piles don’t make you merrier
I hope you slowly open and become aware
you think you know everything and nobody cares

_____________________________

Sol Duc is playing a game alone, capturing her back foot with her front, claws out on both. When she realizes I am watching, she puts her head down and pretends to be asleep. She isn’t asleep, I can tell by the claws and the ear tilt.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: yearn.

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Roof tiles

The roof tiles are imbricated. This is from my travels in March 2022. What do you call a female gargoyle?

Maybe it’s better not to call one.

I also have assisted at imbrication in the operating room. I did obstetrics as part of Family Medicine for 19 years. During a cesarean section, we do a double layer of stitches on the uterus, imbricating it. Enough said.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: imbricate.

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Daily Evil: R is for Ridiculous

This is Donkey Oatie and Sancho Panda. Helen Burling Ottaway did a series for a book or a show or something in the early 1990s. I do not know if it was ever published. There is no date on this. This is colored pencil and the drawing is 9 by 12 inches. I think she did larger watercolors as the final project.

Is being ridiculous evil? I read that today is National Humorous Day. We need humor to let go of stress and blow off steam and to go from the fight or flight sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic relaxed one. Humor is a really good way to go. So watch those silly cat videos and laugh. Ok, not when you are at work. But even at work, my office manager and I needed to blow off steam and laugh. One day she was playing whale songs. I heard her say very seriously into the phone, “Oh, those are whale songs. Dr. Ottaway insists on whale songs.” I howled, because she had picked them. For revenge I made whale noises at her between patients all day. Anybody walking into clinic might have thought we were loons. I can do loon songs very well, better than whale songs.

I know a slightly different tune for The Dummy Line, a variation. There seem to be a bunch!

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Inadvisable

Don’t be flippant with this one.

Taken on Marrowstone Island earlier this week. I was so busy watching this eagle that I tripped over a rock and face planted. If I’d hit a rock I would have lost teeth or knocked myself out. Luckily both I and the camera did fine.

I tend to spot the eagles in the trees by sound. I do watch for them as well. This one called to another, who circled towards the tree. Sound locates them.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: flippant.

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Daily Evil: Q is for Quiet

When is it evil to be quiet? When you are witnessing bullying or injustice or someone being harmed. Have you witnessed bullying and stood by and does it bother you?

I am at a dinner, invited. It turns out that the agenda is to talk a partner into staying, because she has quit. Partner one wants partner two to stay. Partner three and I are horrified and don’t want her to stay, but we do not want to say that to her. We frankly can’t wait for her to leave.

The dinner turns in to partner one and two bullying partner three. I am the newest and don’t know what to do. The next day I am ashamed and think, why didn’t I take partner three and leave? What is the matter with me?

Part of it is that I revert to childhood. I survived a complex household with people who were loving sometimes and horrid and drunk at others. Clamming up and being quiet was how I survived. But I am an adult now and I can leave. I can also speak up and say, “Stop. This is not fair. This is an ambush.”

Today’s watercolor is flowers. My mother loved flowers, had a wild and delightful garden, and painted them often. This is a small watercolor, 7 by 10 inches, no date.

I am thinking about the latest shootings. Aren’t we supposed to welcome strangers, for they may be angels in disguise? What did you stock up on during the pandemic? A gun didn’t occur to me. I bought more water filters and wished I could buy for the whole county. I bought seeds. I bought rice and beans. You can’t eat bullets and they aren’t good toilet paper either. I studied local edible plants. What did you buy? So many people are so afraid.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: nothing. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

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Telegraph

Sol Duc’s posture telegraphs her thoughts. “Where have you been? This is past your bedtime/curfew. I don’t like that and I disapprove.”

“But Sol Duc, I was listening to a band, and it’s only 9 pm. My muscles are feeling better! I am not sleeping twelve hours a night.”

Elwha: “Mom, I was asleep. Why are you out? Sleeping twelve hours is nothing! I can sleep for twenty!”

Me: “Ok, ok, I am home. I am going to bed!”

Body language can say so much! For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: muscle.