My friend Donna listened to my tale of woe, and said, “you’ve been through the wringer, like one of those old-fashioned kinds with two hard rollers that squeeze the living juices out of clothes and leave them flat as pancakes. I’m sure you’ve felt quite flattened yourself!” We had just that kind of wringer when […]
March madness
It’s snowing in Craig, and it can’t seem to stop. Every time we look out the window, another bout of whiteout conditions. A little background: I live in a rainforest. Prince of Wales Island, my home, has many microclimates, and Craig is probably the warmest and rainiest of them all. So why is it compulsively […]
Riding the rollercoaster
My moods have been all over the place. You may know that I have recently had two major surgeries, and that my recovery has been frustratingly slow. Come to think of it, my moods do a daily bell curve. I wake up feeling low, and gradually feel better as the day goes on. Mid to […]
Harris and me
There are good days, and there are days when you step on Harris the Wasp. A little background: When I was growing up we had the phenomenon of the winter wasp. The wasps would grow torpid and crawl around on the floor of the house with no apparent goal in mind. Heaven help you if […]
The big C, not so big
The big C, not so big My sister Laura wrote the following haiku (and the above title) for me. I find myself cheered by it, even as I gear up for lung cancer surgery on February 9. Doctors work for you You are the warlord, sister Kill the cancer cells I was even moved to […]
Ah, winter-ness is paradise!
. . .and thou, beside me, shivering in the wilderness. . . Winter storm Fern (so named, according to my sister Laura, by the dramatic weather people) has struck its tiny fists into my home state of Virginia. Laura says that this sort of thing is pretty much par for January, and feels that everybody […]
So what’s next?
It’s transition time. Right now, I’m thinking that I am tired of having jobs that have me travelling all over the state of Alaska. Some of the places I go to, it would be faster and easier to get to the opposite coast. So here I sit, listening to Joni Mitchell singing, “I could drink […]
Frogging my colorwork, and other lofty pursuits
Sometimes, a person just has to start over. First, however, a digression by way of exposition: The terms “frogging” and “colorwork” come from the fine art of knitting. “Colorwork” is an un-obtuse term meaning when you make a pattern with different colors and keep having to pick up a different strand of yarn. “Frogging,” on […]
Monsters in the house
(I wrote this when my boys were small.) My house is full of monsters, Of every shape and size. Most have extra legs, And some have many eyes. They hide behind the curtains; They creep across the floor. . . And here’s the really strange thing: We got them at the store! You see, they’re […]
Of floating rocks and other natural phenomena
Younger Son and I were taking a walk by the harbor when he remarked on a boat with a concrete hull. “I always wondered how those things float,” he said. Then we mentioned that section of a floating (concrete) bridge that had its first life in the Seattle area, and that continues to float outside […]