Tag Archives: sea lion

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Who is the scamp?

Is the sea lion the scamp? Or the ocean wave splashing up? Or the cormorant in front of the right hand sea lion?

These are sea lions rather than seals, in Puget Sound. The small ear flaps give them away. They are also just bigger than most of our local seals. Males are bigger than females, up to 390 pounds, while the females are up to 110. Here: https://www.eopugetsound.org/articles/california-sea-lion

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: scamp.

We learned this one as kids and sang it very happily.

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Local lions

Our local lions are sea lions! I don’t think of sea lions as being good tempered, with the movies of them chasing prey. But out of the water in the sun off of Marrowstone Island, they seem pretty calm and I did not see displays of bad temper.

Sea lions can dive more deeply than seems reasonable because they slow their heart rates, to use less oxygen, and slow digestion. When they arrive back on the surface, they can get oxygen quickly but getting rid of the CO2 is slower. They have to sit around on the surface and the head back posture helps. I’ll bet they can beat any high school or college student in a burping contest. And as you can see, some of these are just huge. We wondered how they got on the rock. Do they have to at low tide or do they just jump?

I do like to hear them roar. Hooray for our local lions.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: temper.

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Sea lions

Do you think the sea lions are talking to the Beloved? When they are on the rock with their heads tilted back, looking up?

Are they trying to feel the sun?

Do they have reflux and digest better this way?

Do you think the sea lions are talking to the Beloved?

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within normal limits

I think doctoring makes one cynical. Or at least messes up the scale of normal.

Maybe there are Marcus Welby docs out there, but I don’t know any. Doctoring messes up one’s scale. A wound is compared to black horrifying gangrene to the knee, pain is compared to screaming delirium tremens or full thickness burns or heroin withdrawal, one in four adults can be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder at some time in their life…. so then, what is normal?

What is normal for relationships? How many deeply happy marriages do you know? If half end in divorce, what are the odds?

Where is the line in love? Where is the line between loving the other person no matter what and wait, that is domestic violence. Where is the line for abuse? Do people agree on it?

No. They do not. What I think is behavior that is frightening may be normal behavior to my partner. Is it ok to drink until one is drunk? I don’t want to be around it. I saw enough of that shit at work. I deal with addiction daily. If someone wants to get drunk, they can choose to do that. But not around me. And no, I don’t want to date them. And if they are working themselves to death, is that ok? Well, I might be a tad hypersensitive to that, since I nearly managed that myself. So I don’t want to be around that either. That might be viewed as noble self-sacrifice. But at work, I see the caregiver die before the recipient of the care, all too often. Especially in older couples, where neither one wants to let anyone in the house to help….

….but then, some people do hear me. A woman thanked me last year for saying she should quit covering for her husband. She was afraid, but backed off. He is able to do more than she expected and he also is more respectful and kind to her. She thanked me and I got all shy and tongue-tied.

My definition of love is listening. Someone who listens and hears and lets me listen and hear. When each person can say what they are thinking and feeling and wanting and worried about…. because if only one person is speaking, if only one person is determining what the relationship is, it is not a relationship.

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Valentine

I am thinking of you
my love my valentine
on valentine’s day
at two in the morning

two to too
much to bear
I want to be a tiger
not an ox

disabled
but still strong
I settle into the traces
again

the load is placed
I look at my path
gather my strength
turn on my oxygen
and pull

no one expects
an ox on oxygen
to be able to pull

you don’t either

why do you think
so little of me
why do you scorn
what I do

when you return
you find
traces of the wagon wheels
on the ground

but once I am on the road
you can’t follow
you can’t find me
any more

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt slender, as in slender hope.

The photograph is neither an ox nor a tiger, but a sea lion, off of Marrowstone Island, Washington.

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A friend for Mordechai

I drove my daughter back to school in Bellingham on Friday. On the way back I hike at Deception Pass and then stop in Coupeville before going to the ferry. In Coupeville, I found friends for Mordechai, my clinic skeleton. This is a sea lion and there is a whale and a dolphin, all skeletons hanging from the ceiling. I suspect that they are real skeletons and not plastic, as Mordechai is.

My daughter says, “Mordechai was not alive before.”

“I could argue that she was. She is made from plastic, which is made from oil, which is formed over millennia from plants fallen and slowly changing.”

“Ok, you win on that one, mom.”

Doesn’t this sea lion look like she is flying?