Tag Archives: RDP

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Paths

I am reinventing myself now. After my fourth pneumonia, oxygen continuously for a year and now my fifth pulmonologist since 2012. He did not have much to offer. An inhaler but “We can’t be sure that it will keep you from getting pneumonia.”

Well. So with ME-CFS, myalgic encephalopathy chronic fatigue syndrome, now what?

I am at a fork in the path. At least three forks.

  1. Try to do a micropractice, working with Long Covid people. Who either wear masks or I do not see them. I would have to convince the hospital district that it needs me.
  2. Write. I am doing that, but really focus on it and work on publishing. I have so much art from my mother. She did not really enjoy selling it though she loved having shows and would dress up.
  3. I could focus on publicizing and selling my mother’s art.
  4. There is a trunk from my grandfather. I could focus on that. He states that he wants it published. Grandfather, you were a piece of work.
  5. I could just lie around and travel and play with the cats and make music.
  6. Focus on music. I have written a number of songs. Apparently being hypoxic makes me write songs. I think they are peculiar and wonderful too. Flute, voice, guitar, piano, bass. Hmmmm.
  7. Something else. Who knows what will appear? I am doing art too, the two large sculptural pieces in my yard. A fellow doctor scolded me about one. It’s the one with a logging chain and an oxygen tank, attached to a tree. The title is “Tethered”. Now, why would a local doctor object to that? I have some small pieces too that involve found objects and especially feathers and small stemmed glassware.

Many forks! Now I just need more spoons of energy!

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: reinvent.

The photograph was taken in September 2021. Where is the path? I got to hear Jonathan Doyle last night, with George Radabaugh on piano. FABULOUS!

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Yesterday

A triple play: a loss, a gain, a change.

Yesterday

Yesterday our friendship died for good
A small death that won’t be noticed
I want to place a small cross on the day
to mark this death and life
life because my small child is gone
she grew up, now part of the quiet woman
who came to me in a dream
when you left
you move on and tell me you won’t change
so you will find another to draw close
and push away, terror
that you will be trapped
you already are, in your own mind
you say you want freedom
in refusing change, that is death
slow and alone, is lonely different from alone?
call it freedom as you wish

I want to grow, I want to learn always
you want your past, your dead
you tell me I am keeping you from your life
you have it back I say as music restarts
I don’t, you say, my brother is dead, my wife
I did not cause those
they happened before we began to walk
and yet you blame me
like an angry child

I am in the gardens wandering
I am in the gardens wondering
the gardens of the world
everything is a garden
though some are planted with skulls
and young people fighting
It is strange to feel whole
I do not know what to do with it yet
but I will

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I have fallen for this band. I am really enjoying them.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: triple.

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strange

This is part of the decorations in the park by the Kingston, Washington ferry terminal. I think this is a candy cane in the tree. I am afraid that the song that popped into my mind is NOT one of seasonal ones.

And here is another object, this one hanging in the sky.

Live long and prosper.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: hang.

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Query tale

The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is question. Those cat tail question marks come to mind. When I am having tea in the morning, Elwha guards me, facing the doors of the kitchen. There are three doors, so he has to triangulate the angle just right.

I think the question here is clear: “WHY aren’t you rubbing my belly? WHAT do you have to do that is better than that?”

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: question.

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Grace the Sea Serpent

This is Grace, a Winter Break Sea Serpent. She is visiting the Kingson, WA, in the park right by the ferry dock. There are many other creatures. I am not sure what the Sea Turtle’s name is, but she and Grace are clearly friends.

This all seems to be very watery.

There are some more earthly critters, if this is what I think it is.

Striking terror in the heart of gardeners everywhere.

I still like Grace best.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: grace.

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No mosquitoes

Do they really have toes? I don’t know. Probably, tiny insect toes to hold on.

I still have a daisy blooming outside in spite of weather dropping below freezing off and on for a week. We had snow flurries, but further out in the county, they got inches of snow. Port Townsend is in on the Quimper Peninsula, sticking out from the Olympic Peninsula, so all that water gives us a different microclimate.

This is the second year for my “Christmas stick”. I put it up last year because I had these two kittens tearing things apart.

First I need to get the stick to stand. I had a bare stick, with the angel on top, for a week.

Then I cut four branches from the huge tree in my yard and added them to the stick.

The cats wondered, but this year they are not knocking it over so far. I put up lights and decorations yesterday. Not the glass ones: paper and soft ones. Because I’m not sure about the cats.

The cats still aren’t sure about it. We tend not to have a lot of mosquitoes even in summer, partly because the wind often howls up my street. The mosquitoes are blown inland. Too cold right now.

Happy Christmas stick!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: mosquito.

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Thaw

This is Tiktok. In 2019 he overwintered at my house. We had snow and it got very cold at night and I worried. But every morning, he’d appear near the feeder when it got light. Then he would throw a mild conniption at me when I went outside with a hot towel to try to thaw the feeder. “Hurry up, hurry up, I am hungry!” He certainly figured out that I was the person who dealt with the feeder. He would buzz me if the feeder was empty, too. He makes a ticking sound, so that’s where the name is from. One of those old things called clocks, with hands, that ticked.

Right now I have two feeders up. I am seeing a female Anna’s hummingbird in the front, chasing others away, and a male at the kitchen feeder. It may be Tiktok still! I have named the female Emerald. I have seen them together in the top of the plum tree, but this is after Emerald chased Tiktok away from her feeder. It’s a bit unclear if they are friends or not.

Meanwhile, Elwha has the opposite of a conniption.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: conniption.

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Yammer

You’ve joined my silent dead: doesn’t matter
whether you speak or not. You’d like this song
and be jealous of the skills. I yammer
to my dead, the number rising strong.
At sixty I declare that I am middle aged
Mom dies at sixty-one which feels unfair.
My sister dies at forty-nine, cancer rage.
I watched them both as chemo takes their hair.
You too are dead no words across the breach.
I yammer to you daily in my head.
Agates gleam, treasure on the beach.
You refuse to look, I mourn that you act dead.
You sit stubborn in a rocking chair alone.
You don’t believe your dead will call you home.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: yammer.