each day an adventure in alaska: another stretch off nearly complete...

love my days off. even if i'm just lazy for the most part. the weather this week has been very mixed. cloudy, a bit rainy at times.

i did attempt a drive. drove around the wildlife center and then just headed home. the weather was looking bad up the pass. sometimes i just enjoy a drive though. don't think i even took a photo. sometimes i'm not in the mood for pictures.

a bit of a melancholy week as well i guess. i get like that at times. just cabin up a bit. chill with the dogs and cats.

didn't accomplish much at home. the basics. it's after 4 am right now. i went to bed early but then woke up in the middle of the night...so may as well blog.

the dogs had an appointment at the indoor dog pool. bath time as well. it is funny once i bathe them, it's tough to get them out on those muddy/slushy trails and undo the bath. i did eventually get out. we hit the dunes one day. mostly we have gone to the dog park this week. it's melting fast. mud though...tons of mud.

the bears are out i hear and Sunny Boy chased that young moose at the dog park...so i was put off on walks a bit due to not wanting a repeat of that. dogs get killed by moose kicking them. not something i want to witness. nor do i want to witness him getting killed by a bear. there is always that transition i think in the spring. getting used to walking in bear country after feeling fairly safe for several months while they hibernate.

would i return to the lower 48 some place to avoid the bears one day...? then there are ticks/fleas, snakes and those big cats. none of that excites me and is year round. i am also not a fan of heat. never liked the heat.

so i haven't really been out on the main trails this week. bears and slush. it's a mess out there.

read a bit, lazed about. my massage therapist texted that she had an opening. haven't been for ages and so i went for it. always feels good...the only issue is soon after a massage my knots return. they hang out on my upper back. so i have never gone nuts getting regular expensive massages. if i were filthy rich...it's probably one thing i would splurge on more often.

after, free of dogs, i headed to the Eagle River Nature Center. happy no dogs as there as a recent moose encounter where a loose dog was involved and a pissed off moose injured the human. also that trail tends to be grizzly bear country. no reports of sightings posted yet, but there is always that first person who sees the bear...i was happy to not be that person. bears are reported on the trails near me.

my second week of work was not bad. i was on call the first night and never called in. the second night was a decent night in the cardiac surgery unit. not my favorite unit. hearts. they can literally change in a heartbeat. got a sick heart admit...when i called the MD he asked why the patient wasn't in the ICU as he'd wanted. not on many drips but probably had all that by the next night. just had to keep her calm. panic and anxiety can take people down a bad path.

these are from a boat trip still back in July 2020.

glaciers. the scenery up here is pretty amazing.

a million old photo's...as you get older you think more about the stuff that you have collected and what to do with it all. old camera's, old photo's. nobody will want that stuff.

after a hundred years most of us are forgotten. some get really stressed about that idea. so many want to live on forever somehow. i guess part of me leans towards our souls being recycled. returning in a different vessel in order to learn more, gain more. all this stuff we have collected seems more and more irrelevant. being remembered also seems more irrelevant. even our bodies in the boxes under earth return to dust after about 100 years.

many cemetaries the plot is leased...to be resold/released at a later date. you can't possibly just bury every person that has existed over thousands of years without reusing plots. we'd run out of earth.

my grandparents and their grandparents at this point are just names in a list of who's who in the family line. it's the rare person really who is remembered for generations. even many of those that were well known in their time end up just a blip in a history book. a hundred years and most of us are forgotten, 1000 years....?

all you can really do is live this life to the fullest. that doesn't always mean spend every moment doing and going and experiencing. i feel guilty some lazy days/weeks but i also try to keep it in perspective. it has been a bit rough the past few years. i think there is still more healing many of us are doing and part of that healing is resting.

part of that healing is laying about reading or doing nothing while i have a dog/cat nestled in giving me the attention i need at that moment.

eventually, that healing will be more complete and i'll be more ready to move into a more active place again. it's this time of year as well. break up. it's a mess out there. makes getting out there much more challenging. not as many beautiful things to explore since it's just a mess out there. the nature center was great though. perfect reflections. you can generally find some beauty. especially up here.

i redid the skelly's. it was past time. brightens up the place. it's kind of an understated support...rainbow colors. posted on fb the skelly's new look. various comments. sometimes rainbows and rainbow colors are just that. if someone needs more. it's there.

the trans population is having to deal with the hatred being thrown at them. they are not a large portion of the population but they are the current victims of the culture war. the right has no good answers for the issues facing our nation so instead they gain votes by pushing hatred and deflecting from their lack of progress on issues. they are out of step with the society as it moves forward. as they fight to take us back to a past that no longer exists the world will move forward. i keep feeling like this is the last stand for many from a different time and different way of thinking.

is it the marginalized portions of society that destroy it or is it those who feel threatened by those small groups. hate is far more destructive. people who allow their fear to turn to hate are the biggest threat. they are easily manipulated.

it is funny to me. many who, during covid, couldn't be bothered to wear masks, social distance, get vaccines and whatever because it was only 1-2% of the population that was dying from covid; are now the ones often flipping out over 0.5% of the population that is trans.

sadly, i have a few siblings that i understand are pretty focused on the trans group. having watched enough right wing bull to be sucked into the social war. i suspect they have rarely, if ever, had much experience with many in the trans group. i'm a nurse and it's a group i don't run across very often. my niece and i were talking about this as she has kids in sports. this is an area of focus for many on the right. like thousands of trans kids are trying to play sports and how unfair it is. they could care less about their kids getting killed by guns in schools but omg, if a trans kid wants to play a sport. the truth is these numbers are super low. i mean a handful in each state. she hasn't really noticed any issues in all her time coaching or being involved

that is because it's mostly a made up issue. first off, i'd say, i'm not sure kids sports should be so competitive. also, most of these trans kids are dealing with a lot and are not necessarily big into sports. getting hormone therapy and/or blockers is probably not always conducive to being an athlete. the other thing i always like to point out...guys are not going to cut off their dicks just to win at female sports. it's just not a thing. i do realize that there are going to be those few cases....but seems better to deal with these in smaller groups than make law after law about it.

as for the bathroom thing. i have no idea why our society has become so obsessed with shitting and pissing. everyone needs to do these things. i guess i'd be for just making bathrooms more unisex. been in plenty of unisex bathrooms and i have survived.

i actually posted a few semi political posts of tiktok. one was pretty well received. i was expecting a bunch of hate filled comments and comments saying how ugly i was or something. as a nurse, i think i'm pretty innocculated against the hate. people can be pretty hateful to you. not much of late. haven't been in the ER for a bit...was i cut off because of that class and not aware of it? not sure. i was also not in the ICU for quite a bit...in the end, they will usually forget all of that if they really need you in a unit. that class comes up in a week or two. most of this month i'll only be on shifts 2x/week.

maybe today will be more productive. i head back to work thursday night so it would be fitting that i start to get energized now, right before i return, haha.

did feel sore after the massage. she does a good deep massage. i think it releases a lot of toxins. maybe after i retire i should do a few extra massages to clean out all the toxins from working bedside.

i think it's just taxing to deal with death over and over. i don't think i really thought too much about it until covid. it just altered the atmosphere at work.

there was before Aids and after Aids and now there is before Covid and after Covid. there are a lot of staff that didn't work before covid. i'm happy that i am nearing the end of this career. things just always change and many of the changes are annoying to those who have been there before the changes. just so much more controls put on us. in the past, we just had more autonomy. the more computers the less autonomy. i know some of it is good. probably far less med errors i'm sure. a lot is not as good though. less critical thinking in many ways i think.

hospitals are screwing themselves really. i suspect the future of nursing and other bedside staff will be individual contracts. good for them....they will have more power. these hospitals got too greedy and now they are running short staffed and forced into contracts with staff. the regular staff will tire, as i am, of watching others make loads more money on contracts then they do. it used to be we got travel staff in the summer and that would allow us to take vacations easier. now those travel staff get contracts that include the perfect schedules and the regular staff get pushed to fill in the gaps rather than the other way. that will not be good.

more men going into nursing...part of that will benefit nurses as a whole. for decades the hospital administration, mostly male, were able to treat their mostly female staff like the rest of society did. women got less for similar work loads. now more men being in there should force the admin to improve stuff across the board. i suspect many males just won't put up with what women put up with for years.

guess i should head back to bed for a bit. get some more sleep and see what i can accomplish today. as the yard thaws, the poop pick up continues. the fence has not fallen over as i expected. both my neighbor and myself were very happy with that.

pretty, bright colors below. that thing in the middle is nudibranch of some sort i think.

been enjoying just sitting out back tossing the ball for Ivy and listening to the return of so many birds. this time of year the birds are returning in droves so there is new sounds all over. keep hearing the sandhill cranes overhead. a unique sound. very cool birds. the swans, the geese. the place is filling up with birds again.

this month i have a boat trip scheduled, that class for two days, a trek to Homer.

the long days are here and more adventures lie ahead. love the drama of this place. how each week can change so much. each day at the dog park the snow melts and the lake ice melts. it looks different every day. then the plants will come and flowers, then the mushrooms and then it all starts to die off in prep for the next winter.

hopefully, several treks to the beach. road trips. day treks. always more to see out there. the same drive/hike over and over can bring new experiences.