you know you are tired when you shop for your skeleton...

 the rest of the iphone from Harriman...the summer uptick of picture taking has begun...so i am behind already...and i was already behind from the previous year....maybe when I'm 90 I'll slow down and catch up!!  haha.

 when I'm 90 I'll be looked at as feeble and nobody will even know that i had a somewhat exciting life. i love asking my patients questions about their lives..everyone has a story to tell.

 i worked all three in the ICU...well one night i started out in the ER but that quickly changed and i headed up to the ICU again.  they are a bit short of late.  not bad nights.  death one night.  our nation really doesn't handle death.  i find most people are just really clueless about it.  i feel like a knowledgeable guide to death at this point.  sometimes you really have to hand hold folks through the process.  it's not always what it appears on tv and movie shows.  it's too bad folks are not more involved in the full lives of their relatives.  we celebrate birth but death, we just try to ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist...and yet we all will die at some point.

 beautiful sunset one night at least. the other nights were more wet.  it's been wet this week.  i love when it rains when I'm working.  the dogs had two days of tennis ball throwing.  i usually try to get them out walking but perhaps that is the age showing.  maybe i just need more sleep working night shift.  I'm still pretty good at getting up and getting them walked.  i try to only skip one day a week...or less.  yesterday we just hit the dog park as it was raining for sure.

 today it cleared enough i got a more real walk in for them.  we did the Campbell Airstrip.  selfie above..below is a heart kelp.

 we ate this really good kelp salsa on our paddle out of Gustavus several years back.  nummy!!

 today started cloudy but by the afternoon it had gotten pretty.  i did some yard work then later did more yard work.

 time to get the pots planted outside.  always makes it look all summery.  i hit Freddies for some plants. 

 my kayak buddies!!  many great trips under our belts!!

 i wanted to go moose spotting a bit.  saw one bull headed up Campbell Airstrip Road...love the velvet. I've also heard our resident moose had a few calves in Baxter Bog by my place.  she is very protective and has chased a few folks already...i left the dogs at home and did a loop.  did see her and her cute babies, but i kept my distance. 

 still looking at pictures from this trip so the moose will have to wait. i wanted to take a break from looking a pictures so figured I'd blog. 

 liked how the shot above turned out.  random. 

 today is Memorial Day.  for most folks it's a bbq day and a day of sales, but it's a day set aside to remember those who have fought in wars and not returned.  it's a day to remember that war is not to be taken lightly.  that we should do all we can to avoid it and find a peaceful means to rectify our differences.  if you have gone to war then diplomacy has failed. 

 like all else in the new America we are rapidly becoming capitalist to our own detriment.  currently only a small fraction of our population actually serves in the military.  if you have money and means you get out of it.  more and more i see that this is not a good plan.  probably everyone should serve our nation in some way at some point in our young lives. 

 the poorer are disproportionately impacted by the loss of loved ones due to war. the wealthy get out of it all some how. bone spurs comes to mind...and yet it's folks who have never served often sending other peoples kids to wars that they do not return from.  we like to say all those lost protect our freedom but often they fight in pointless, senseless, avoidable wars...they deserve better.

 was laughing at GOP complaining about cost of Mueller report....it was expensive and more investigations will also be expensive, but over double the cost was retrieved by what Manafort had gotten away with with fraud against the government, taxes...and what not.  i don't hear them complain one bit about the continued expenses of the 20+ years of investigations into Clintons/Obama and now the FBI/CIA...any enemy of the iitoo...he will use our tax dollars to go after....so GOP like.  they have only one answer to anything and it's theirs.  who knew one group of people could be so completely sure they were right and everyone else in the world was wrong.  our allies, the scientists....the only ones that the iitoo trusts are oligarchs and Put in Rus and his buddies in Saudi and NK.  he doesn't trust any of our intelligence.  he doesn't trust intelligence period.  smart people can't possibly be right about anything...elitists!! haha.

 so they are wasting time and money investigating the investigators as they continue to rely on the fact that most folks are too lazy to actually read the Mueller report and will rely on the very flawed interpretation by Barr and the iitoo yammering on constantly no collusion, no obstruction.  the report actually shows there was much obstruction but since Mueller can't indict a sitting potus...he sent it to congress to deal with.  he also didn't say they were clear on collusion just that there wasn't enough evidence for a case.  that is quite different than total exoneration.  it is interesting reading...and i recommend we all sit down and read it...it's only like 448 pages, many redacted. 

 a size 8 quake hit in the Amazon jungle, Homer had a 6.2 i think. i was sleeping.  that is a ways away though.  if it's big enough you will feel it.  aside from rain we had no major catastrophes when we were out paddling.

 gotta say as well that with all the belly aching about how we have no money to educate this nations children or provide healthcare to this nations citizenry...we have 16 billion bucks again to bail out farmers who are in trouble because of the trade war created by this administration.  yet those fools stand by their man and take their cash. 

 they also fall short when it comes to caring for the children we have in this nation. i get pretty sick of their battle to stop all abortions because of the "sanctity of life" when they prove over and over that they could care less about those lives once they are here.  we already have too many kids in foster care, who grow up and age out.  we have too many kids who are abused, neglected, missing meals, living homeless. 

 most abortions occur because people fear they do not have the means to care for those kids once they are born....yet the GOP boys want to make sure these kids are all born and then to hell with them all.  they hate spending their tax booty on food stamps or welfare or birth control or sex education or education at all.  so i am sorry if i have little sympathy for their sanctity of life claims.  it's a hollow lie unless they start coming through for the kids we already have.

 we are all for less abortions...but the way to get there isn't to outlaw them and jail the women who get them and their doctors...by the way why don't any of these GOP men want to lock up the sperm donors.  it's been proven over and over that access to healthcare and birth control decrease unwanted pregnancies.  access to good education decrease unwanted pregnancies.  these are things the right doesn't wish to spend money on. 

 the gop boys love to focus on late term abortions and make them out to be some sort of planned murder...for the most part folks who end up having later term abortions desperately wanted the child and come up against horrible choices.  above is vole tracks.  we were trying to figure out where we could safely camp...were these signs of tide levels?  we decided they were vole tracks...BO said you could tell because the voles push the rocks up and out of their little underground trails

 he drifts us closer to war with Iran apparently...they like to at least threaten war.  war mongers it is called. do they want all those women to have babies so they can send them off to war?

 we love campfires!!  despite the rain we had a campfire each night.  always a favorite

 another migrant child has died in our "sanctity of life" caring arms.  great job Trump administration.  keep making excuses, keep blaming others.  it seems to be working on your oh so loyal followers.

 my view from the tent.  pretty sweet

 the otters are eating well.  loads of muscle shells on the beach we landed on. 

 so i turn 55 in less than an hour...well not exactly. feeling chill on this one.  seemed like a good time to do some yard work and plant some pretty stuff.  not sure what I'll do tomorrow.  nothing special probably...but every day is gift enough i think.  in my work i see ends that come too early and ends that come when they should.  enough to feel grateful for each healthy year that passes, that i can kayak and walk and enjoy the simplest things this life has to offer.  when it gets down to it...it's the simple daily tasks of life that matter the most.  the kindness offered up to each other. the wag of the dogs tail.  a good meal, a sunset...it's all those little things that make life full and happy.

 too often we see things as filling us up.  we look to others to complete us.  we hope for things beyond our grasp.  we compare and contrast our lives with others or for the life we hoped we would have when we were young.  you get what you need in this life if you are lucky.  any thing else is just icing on the cake.

 i have been pretty blessed....not in the ways i once hoped or figured i would be, but life takes it's own way and you must adapt to the way your life goes.  if you can't you can end up bitter and jealous and miserable...if you do you can hopefully rise above the 7 deadly sins of life. 

 Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath and Sloth...though those little sloths are super cute.

 Greed seems the most prevalent....along with Gluttony...i mean really, how much money do these folks really need.  how many yachts, how many mansions?  it's nuts!!

 the gear needed for a 3 night, 4 day kayak trek

 my boat is loaded and ready to roll...actually, this is just after i landed at our next camp site.  it is all loaded though.  we unload it right there and haul the gear and the boat separately...easier that way.

 these are empty and waiting to be loaded on the boat to head out.

 BO getting silly with moss lichen

 the group at sunset

 heart rock.  always a sweet find

 i think these are a few from my little point and shoot wet weather camera.

 grey whales have been dying on their migration north this year.  very sad.  i think 50-60 have been found up and down the west coast.  we have already found 3-4 of them washed up in AK.  that doesn't include the ones that don't wash up. so far they don't seem to know why. was just reading that back in 2000 a total of 131 dead greys were found. malnutrition seems to be the cause most likely.  so sad though.  whales are amazing.  greys have a really long migration.  they can get up to 49 feet long and 90,000 pounds.  wow!!

 my buddy SJ. we both had our first paddle together with a group years ago in Ketchikan.  that was in Misty Fjords.

 he still laughs because on that first trip we promised each other we'd get photo's of one another. later i handed him a packet of photo's I'd taken of him and his face dropped because he'd totally forgotten to take any pictures of me.  he has spent every trip trying to make up for that by taking pictures of me. haha.

 look there is a company in Juneau that harvests seaweed and makes and distributes Kelp Salsa...hmm!!  you should check it out.

 catching up on some newspapers.  a woman who was pregnant in Chicago was brutally murdered and the baby she was carrying was cut out of her.  the killer was a woman who lured the pregnant woman over with promises of baby clothing. apparently the killer woman had lost her son recently and so she thought she'd just get herself another kid to raise.  crazy.  woman are extremely vulnerable during pregnancy.  high murder rate for pregnant women, usually domestic violence though. another reason to allow woman to make these choices themselves.  if you don't want an abortion, then don't you get an abortion. 

 a wet paddle the afternoon we arrived.

 always good to get out though.

 take a break then look through more photo's...see what i have.  i know there was a pretty rainbow one morning.

 well, can only sit for so long, then i gotta move....or go lay down. i can lay down for a long time.  :-)

Happy Birthday Me!!  thankful for :  A.  a fun and healthy 55 years so far...  B. no fuss, no muss, no coconuts.  C.  flowers popping up around town