This is Helen Burling Ottaway, my mother, in 1945.
The vest was red wool with embroidery. We had it still, when we were kids. We probably wore it out.
I am not pensive today, I am festive! And home! Three days of driving, with Sol Duc the cat objecting quite a bit, and we are home in Washington.
There are a LOT of mountains between Grand Junction, Colorado and Port Townsend Washington. Many passes as we drove northwest, over to Salt Lake City and then up through Idaho, part of Oregon and then Washington. There was snow on the first pass, but not on the road. We stayed in Burley, Idaho and then in Pendleton, Oregon. When I drove over Snoqualmie Pass, we drove into a cloud and rain and suddenly I could smell the sound! Salt and sea! It was raining in Pendleton yesterday morning but there was no ocean smell. Sol Duc continued to complain intermittently and got tired and slept a lot. Just wait, cat, we are going back!
It is fabulous to be home and see friends already! A friend came and made me banh xeo, Vietnamese pancakes, with spinach and salmon filling, and then I crashed to sleep.
Sunday a friend and I hike in the Colorado National Monument again. I have not run out of trails at all! Two trails. Up the Devil’s Kitchen shorter trail, which requires some clambering. Fabulous rocks and fabulous views!
Next the No Thoroughfare Canyon Trail. It has falls and a pool: here is the pool.
It is a bit dry at this time of year. We did not do the entire canyon: we’re both traveling this coming weekend, so we needed time to get ready. Packing and cleaning.
It’s hard to see the scale in photographs. The rocks on the ground are as tall as I am. And that is the trail, winding through those rocks. Did the rocks wash down from further up? They do not look like the surrounding hills. Those are some serious boulders for a seasonal stream to carry.
There is a parcel of land up the road from me. I noticed over the last couple months that it is blocked off so people cannot see in. But now I have been there: Studt’s Corn Maze and Pumpkin Farm.
Our Olympic Peninsula Corn Maze does not have a mechanical bull to ride, or Redneck Bazooka. There was also a kid game called jelly balls that had masks and guns, but I don’t think the guns actually fired at all. They just made noises.
There is a large hay slide, a large pumpkin patch and a very large corn maze. I found all the story sections but didn’t finish the mystery puzzle. There is an air filled bouncing place.
And a rather attractive petting zoo. Hurrah for the watchful goats!
In clinic we are seeing Strep A and Covid in the last two months, quite a lot.
Covid is all over the map with symptoms. One person had been traveling, did not feel well, but the main symptom was dry lips. Positive covid. Another was vomiting, with no upper respiratory symptoms. Some have diarrhea and upper respiratory symptoms. It interests me that flying home to Washington last month, only about three of us on the planes wore masks. I was one of them. I know people who have taken flights knowing that they have Covid, a day or two after diagnosed, so I can’t say that I trust the other people on airplanes. We are testing for Covid for almost any symptom or just feeling sick.
We are seeing Strep A as well. I saw a small child vomiting. I asked if her nose hurt: no. Throat: yes. Tummy: yes. Toes: no. She had strep A. The oldest person with strep A this week was ninety. She said, “How did I GET it?” Streptococcus is in the environment, including our throats. We may just carry it around, but then if we get overtired or stressed (good or bad stress) or have something happen, the strep can invade. We treat strep A mostly to prevent rheumatic fever, which is where our own antibodies to strep A attack us. I have seen three cases of rheumatic fever in my career. That is called a “pseudo autoimmune” disease. The strep A has cell surface markers that sometimes are close enough to ours that our own antibodies attack our body parts.
One person in the last month has a positive strep A. I write for penicillin and send her home. We call her later because the Covid/influenza/RSV test takes longer. She also has Covid! That seems like a bit much, rather unfair, but we can have two things. An initial infection can lower our immune defenses and another virus or bacteria gets hold.
Another person had tested negative for Covid, but that was four days before. Friday afternoon, so I would not get the results at home. I asked her to retest at home. Positive.
There are Strep B and C and D and so forth. Sometimes we pick them up on throat cultures. I treat if the person is still sick and symptomatic while the culture is in the laboratory.
I am wearing a mask in airports and on airplanes. I just don’t want to pick anything up, or at least do what I can to avoid it.
The photograph is Elwha in May 2023. I figure that you would rather see his tongue than mine.
Got sick in clinic yesterday, about 20 minutes after eating lunch. Abdominal cramping and lost lunch and lay down until I could drive home. Went to sleep for another four hours. I got up to hydrate slowly, some water with a little sugar, every 15 minutes. Taking it slowly is gentler on the stomach. I went back to sleep.
I got up at 11 pm and had a few crackers. This morning I am tolerating tea, but my body feels rather like it’s been beaten up. No clinic today, but I think tomorrow would be ok. We shall see.
I am not sure of the cause. I was given some gluten free donuts and wonder if one had gluten. Food poisoning is not very common in the places I have lived. We are seeing some people with Covid who have abdominal symptoms rather than upper respiratory, so I am debating whether I should home test.
It’s been a strenuous twenty four hours!
The photograph is from the Fruita Fair a few weekends ago. I really wanted to do this with the kids. Today even looking at the picture makes me slightly nauseated! Whew! They were in climbing harnesses and then attached to giant rubber bands and bouncing. Some were able to do flips, too. Not me, not today!
I have been in Grand Junction since the end of April. The Grand Valley really has amazing visual distances from one end of the valley to another, and even though it is a valley, it is at 4600 feet above sea level. It is surrounded by higher mesas and mountains in all directions.
Soon I drive back to Washington for a few weeks. That is a distance, too, 1200 miles with Sol Duc cat. She doesn’t really enjoy the car. I wonder if she will enjoy going home. Will she like the cloud settling over us, as if the bottom of it is grazing the roof tops? I did not like those clouds when I first moved to Washington but now they feel as if they enfold us and comfort us, an intimacy with the sky.
The Ragtag Daily Prompt today is identity. Yesterday I went to work an hour early so I could attend the Friday morning Continuing Medical Education. It was about adult ADHD and the positives and negatives.
I do not have a diagnosis of ADHD. I have one friend who insists that I have it, but I don’t much care. However, the speaker started talking about masks and authenticity. She said that we are told to be authentic at work, but that people with ADHD often find that their authentic self is not welcomed and they learn to mask.
I asked, doesn’t everyone mask somewhat at work? She said, “Good point, and yes, people do.” It got me thinking about identity and masks. I pretty much clammed up in Kindergarten because I was too much of an outlier and culturally wrong. We did not have a television and television was pretty much what the other children talked about. I knew songs and poems but these did not interest my peers. I was interested in science, too, but that was also not popular. I think I was a geek before it was named and as soon as I learned to read, I became a bookworm. I am not sure if having a television would have made any difference, either.
Fast forward to after high school. I went to Denmark as an exchange student my senior year and then needed to make up credits to graduate. Another high school student was in my Community College classes. After a bit, she said, “I thought you were shy in high school.” I said, “No, I just didn’t talk.”
Currently I am more authentic in the room with patients than with the rest of the staff. Corporations are very weird hierarchical places. My authentic self always questions authority but I am trying not to do it all the time. At least, not out loud. The patients seem to be fine with it. I had a very difficult conversation with an elderly couple this week about memory and planning, now, before they can’t. I got hugs at the end of the visit even though we’d gone into frightening and difficult territory. They did very well. Yesterday was my last day at that clinic and next week I am in another one. Even after just four months in this clinic, I will miss many of the patients and hope they do well.
Yesterday I really did Urgent Care. My schedule only had a few people and then six more sick ones were added on. We had to call an ambulance for one, the first time I’ve had to do that here.
What is authenticity and what is our identity? Is the work mask less real than the self in our minds?
I took the photograph at a small hot springs resort. A friend that I’ve known since high school and I met there. I love the bookworm rabbit. I think she represents the happy bookworm part of me. I read about 7 novels a month, haunting the library here. Maybe I will get to know some more people over the next 6 months.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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