a tale of two Mays...

 

these are all from last years May and this years May. very different. 

generally, May is this secret happy month up here for locals. the tourists haven't really shown up and the place is ours. May is sunny, warm and growth is crazy.  with all the snow we had this last season it was a much slower melt. i just finally mowed the first time last week.

it was also a cooler/wetter May than usual. so the temps stayed down in the 40's-50's much of month. 

went to Seward for a day trek last week and the lupine were just barely getting a start. they were turning up on turnigan arm.  just all the flowers are a bit behind the normal. popping now i think though. 

i am on my stretch off. i had pondered what to do and in the end i did book a glamping tent at the KOA in Valdez.  just spares me the setting up.  supplies me with a cot and a little electric i guess for phone charging.  a bit more room as it's taller. i'll toss in the tent just in case. always good to be prepared for anything up here. a hotel just seemed too spendy and i have taken to enjoying the KOA there. a bit out of town and less local rabbits. 

the flowers along that drive can be super pretty. i think i'll skip the glacier and make other stops/walks out there. 

my work week wasn't bad. 2 nights Cardiac Surgery Unit, 2 nights in the Progressive Care Unit split and one night on call until 11pm when i got called in for a sitter gig. not bad.

the split is just tiring because you have to leave the unit and walk down a hall to get to two of your patients.  kind of strange. i had this miserable/crank patient the one night and luckily i missed out on him the next week in PCU.  that night his even more miserable/cranky family were there. all just nasty people. demanding and stupid. 

family was also a bit of a factor in the sitter gig. the son never even really spoke to his father from what i remember.  never did anything.  just treated me like his little hired hand so he didn't have to do anything.  if his dad squirmed, the guy just looked at me.  no attempt to calm his dad.  luckily his dad wasn't that bad.  many of us in the hospital are missing the old days when family wasn't allowed due to covid. the good old days...haha

walks with the dogs between shifts to the dog park. a few lazy days with no walks, one day with 2 walks...i came home feeling perky and remembered the days before i got a house with a yard and a dog door.  in those days i came home from work and took the dog for a leash walk. i think it's a good thing as it clears your head a bit before you head to bed and i suspect i have a more restful sleep. 

Ivy just wanted the old ways the next day with the tennis ball being tossed. she has her habits as well.

we've had all this rain but haven't really had any rainbows!

a Happy Solstice to all. we have passed our longest day and now we will soon start to lose about 5 minutes of light/day.  

need to do some more cleaning/purging as i have family coming.  always great getting visitors because it tends to inspire me to make turn the anti-guest room back into the guest room.  amazing how much clutter collects, especially when you don't have visitors coming. 

this is Eagle River Nature Center. i'd had a massage so i just cruised over there. always pretty...the brown bears seem to get pretty thick there. i guess spring is a great time to spot bears on the drive out there. i debated, but never made the drive out there. 

this is the dunes. not sure where i'm going today.  yesterday i ended up at powerline with a friend. thre were a few bikers who were packing in ski's so there is still enough snow out there for that.  the trail is clear to the bridge for sure though. as i said, flowers way behind but starting to pop

the world is a bit crazy right now....the hired mercenaries that putin has used to terrorize and torture the Ukrainians has gone rogue.  he's now turned on putin and is out of Ukraine and in russia. from reports putin has fled. of course, my joke is he is headed to mar a lago to request trumps help.  lol. the guy who runs the mercenary is a real beast as well so not an upgrade at all if he gets power. russia has nukes and they have also got the Ukraine nuke power plant seeded with bombs...it's all a bit sketchy and scary.  

so who knows what will happen over the next days/weeks.  will see what the Ukrainians do with this power gap and retreat.  

all eyes were on these rich people last week who had each paid 1/4 million to go in a home made sub to view the titanic. the thing apparently imploded. the search was on for several days...millions spent trying to save the ultra rich doing ultra rich things while in another part of the world a boat of like 700 desperate poor refugees perished at sea and seemingly nobody lifted a finger to try and help them.  just that stark contrast of life on this globe...how the wealthy are valued over the poor. 

the titanic is a grave site of the poor as the rich were prioritized on the life rafts over the poor. 

i really should be eating and i should feed the dogs...it's getting late.  where does the time go!

dogs fed, eating some cheese. still need to shower and all that. 

plus i will need to pack for trek to Valdez. just like to make sure i take advantage of summer, even if the weather isn't always perfect.

had thoughts about prayer the other day.  the shower can be very inspirational for me, haha. 

i have thought even as a teen how odd the whole prayer thing was. the answering of some prayers over others. that there is a God that would answer seemingly ridiculous prayers while ignoring life or death calls of prayer. 

this idea that if God answers your prayer you were somehow deserving more than others. then if God doesn't answer your bigger requests...well, life lessons, God works in mysterious ways...the gas lighting comments come out. how is it a God of this universe would respond to a request to find lost keys  but not to millions of Jews or Ukrainians, at this time, calling out for help. does God only answer if you are in the right church, right religion? why so haphazard in the response. 

i mean, if the thing you request happens it's some sort of miracle and if it doesn't happen either you weren't worthy, in the wrong religion or God had other plans? it's like God always has this get out of jail free card and then gets credit for anything good that happens. 

these are from last May by the way now

your worthiness was always a big one in the church i grew up in.  are you worthy enough for God to respond you your tiny requests but not to the larger ones? some times in life things just work out for you and sometimes they don't.  when they do, this habit of praising God as if nothing could possibly go right for you unless God or the church make it so.  when bad things happen despite the prayers, it's often viewed as the one who prayed who wasn't worthy enough. 

it was always this way in my mind with the church. anything good is because of the church and god, anything bad, well that was the fault of the individual. 

pretty screwed up really. 

this idea of miracles...really just confounds it all more.  i mean...the rarity of God actually answering a prayer is seen as such a long shot that when it does seem to happen it's called a miracle. what kind of a cruel god ignores nearly all pleas for help and just randomly responds?  

the god stuff makes less and less sense the more i know in life. just some idea that there is someone/something out there who can save you from the burdens, when the truth is there probably isn't.  also i think i always liked the idea that the evil in this world would some day be held to account, the actuality is that this probably never really happens.  perhaps karma.  that isn't always true though either. even hitler is rumored to have escaped to s. america to live out his life in relative peace. not sure if that really happened or if he did get killed in the bunker. bad people often get the pass because they are wealthy and well connected...there is zero proof that they get theirs in the next life...but it makes us feel a bit better to hope they do i guess.  that some burning in hell will happen...

of course, according to many of these religions that burning in hell thing can happen if you masturbate or do the smallest infraction.  so i will burn in hell along side hitler...same punishment for very different crimes??? 

i just always found this idea of a god that is all knowing and aware that i have had a coke or a glass of wine or coffee to be a concept beyond any reality. 

mostly i think, i hope that if there is a supreme being out there that i do hope that being is dealing with much bigger issues in our world than whether i drank a coffee. 

as i write that i laugh thinking this God is much like the modern GOP...focused on the smallest of issues while totally turning away from the real issues facing our society.  they are a mess at this point.  wasting tax dollars on trivial bull and accomplishing nothing that will actually improve our society/nation

i booked orca island and my niece booked a float in Coopers Landing.  both things have been on my to do list so happy about that. 

always love my sea star time.  they are just happy makers. 

no good low tides in Valdez and when we are in Homer the tide won't be good. it's gonna be good the week before but i have work. 

i did an every other night over the 4th of July so i'll be home with the dogs for the fireworks

Covid cat has been out and about.  coming in wet. he glanced towards one of the humane traps...hadn't checked it for a bit.  in the end there was a dead little shrew in there. oops.  guess that wasn't very humane of me.  at least i saw it before it started to degrade. 

last years lupine...

well, i better get this day moving along. 

more stars and then off i go. hopefully, i accomplish a few things today. 

grateful for A. long days B. chill days C. summers

enjoying my days off...except the dentist part.

 

at this moment i am hungry and the dogs are hungry and i have a little headache.  lots of little headaches.  addiction to excedrin at times i'm sure. the caffeine thing.  i'm not a coffee drinker at all. i figure the occasional aspirin is not a bad thing at this age. 

recovery from work is longer than it was a few years ago. i've always heard of people hitting the wall when it comes to nightshift. until the past year or so the wall didn't exist for me really. the walks between shifts get missed more than they used to and that day after my stretch i'm more beat than i once was. 

makes me lean more towards retiring from Prov before next summer seem more appealing. find some other job to get insurance for a few years. i don't really want to work a full 12 hour day shift though.  what to find that will be less stressful, provide insurance and still allow me the freedom i've grown used to? i have some time this winter to plan so i will enjoy this summer as it is. 

so far it's been a cloudy and breezy summer.  May is often the little Alaskan secret.  we tend to have great weather and lower tourist numbers.  the tourist season is coming sooner and ending later though. people are discovering our secret. 

i am finding post covid i have to plan more and can't be as spontaneous as i was in the past.  things fill up super fast.  hotels are just not as available. bummer as i do like to just look at weather and take off. 

my plan for today is blog then head to Seward for a day trip.  i've done a few day trips this stretch off so far. 

there is a little sea star inside the above shell...so cute. 

on Saturday i ended up in Portage Valley.  was debating a Seward run that day but there was a window in Portage where the weather wasn't bad and i'd gotten a late start. so i walked part of the trail of blue ice with the dogs.  trails closer to Anchorage are getting more and more packed.  i ran into fewer people there.  the weather probably also helped that. fair weather walkers. 

after that we headed to Byron Glacier walk. there are big snow piles down low that make for nice photo ops and the dogs love any and all snow. the actual glacier has receded back super far from when i first got to Alaska. still quite a few tourists made the short trek and several were climbing far up the pretty unstable snow pack. not the wisest. i tend to not stay too long for fear my services may be required. 

Sunday i headed to the Matanuska Glacier. always a favorite with the dogs as well. the owner of the access knows me at this point and i just text them early in the day to see if they are cool with me coming. 

they have been nice so far. the weather cleared as we got closer and the light was like above, right on the glacier. they have altered the route they take the tours as the glacier has receded and this part is more open.  i guess the area to the left, where they used to go, has gotten pretty muddy and more difficult for the tourists to walk on. 

there were still some nice kettle ponds for the dogs to play in and they are now stained with glacial silt. 

both nights i ended the day having dinner with friends so that was nice. 

yesterday i woke early. needed to as it was the day to put our schedules in. they allow those of us that have been there 10+ years to go a day early. i still kind of panic about it all. i can manage icu patients but krono's is always a challenge for me. i'm pretty much of the opinion that these corporations like krono's because it makes it impossible for us to know if we are getting paid accurately. i'm sure i've lost money due to the complicated system. 

now they have us clocking in/out for lunches. it all makes me feel like i work at McDonalds and not like i'm a professional at all.  so it's really annoying.  i just try to remind myself that it's not that much longer before i can walk away from all of it. all the annoying stuff. 

work my last week was CSU and the ICU. not bad nights really. kept steady. 

today i trimmed my hair a bit.  really should make an appointment. need to make a Dr appointment as well and i want to get in the old colonoscopy this fall.  all so exciting. 

the lupine are popping out all over.  love the lupine.  it feels like everything is just a bit delayed this year.  lots of snow and a slow spring. 

my nieces should get some great flowers though, so that is always good. 

haven't seen any critters really these past few weeks.  i'd seen enough the first part of spring. don't really enjoy running into them on the trails...from the car is fine though. 

these knots are bad today.  no idea what caused that. 

yesterday was a lazy day.  could have gotten out, probably should have. after the schedule crap i had the dentist appointment for a cleaning. that is always stressful as well. some ptsd from previous years of dental stuff i suspect. always waiting during a cleaning for some instant pain.  none happened.  the one dentist felt that an old filling should be changed to a crown as that tooth is getting some cracking. 

part of you feels like, do what you can.  i don't think the dental/vision stuff is the greatest after you retire. it's extra charge i think. just as peoples teeth and vision and hearing get worse, there is no coverage. our system is archaic and cruel really. have no idea why the GOP is so against basic care for our citizens.  they don't want to spend money, fear it's socialism.  the rest of the free world has these as basic.  why shouldn't you want a citizenry that is both healthy and educated.  that is the question for those who support the GOP....why don't you want this for your fellow citizens. 

i suspect many of them dream of being those top earners and the American Dream scenario has convinced them that they will rise above all the others and when they do they want all the protections that have gone to the wealthy to apply to them.  silly as most of them will never rise to the level they aspire to.

i suspect their religious views set them up for this as well. this belief that you were purposely born to the right religion.  that somehow your religion/church is the correct one.  that all the other humans on earth were not as worthy as you since they ended up in those other churches, other religions. our ego wants us to be right, to be better than others. 

it's all pretty silly really. where we end up as far as religion has more to do with where we are born rather than some predetermined plan. like most things.....there are always more ways to get to the same place. i've seen this in medicine.  there are many different treatment plans/options.  these are also often determined by where you physician went to school, what experiences they had in training...what papers they have read. 

our morals/values and ethics come from many places and can alter depending on where you live, religions, parents, school. you do not require a religion to have these things, as a matter of fact, i think i trust those who do not have religion forced down their throat with fear tactics to have a more solid base at times. you shouldn't not kill people are rape people just because a religion tells you not to.  you should not do those things because you are decent and those things are just indecent. that isn't to say you can't get morals/values and ethics through religion, but i'm just tired of this attitude that the religous right has the corner on these things.  they also claim to have the corner on all things patriotic.  

the GOP has convinced many people that you can't be moral if you do not vote for them. that somehow, to vote for a Democrat or Independent is proof of evil. this blending of their religious fears and politics is really destructive to our society.  it is currently the downfall of our society. we must find a way to break these religious/political ties. 

the orange fool has been indicted. he is headed to court again.  somehow anything he does is okay as anything the GOP does is okay. if the Dems do it, it's a sin, satanic. they are acting like it's horrific for anyone to go after a former potus, like it's disrespectful and damaging to society. they always forget that for probably most of my life, they have been trying to arrest Dems.  somehow it's always their side that ends up on the wrong side of the law...or mostly their side. 

the witch hunt they like to say this all is...well they have been doing witch hunts on Dems for generations now.  sadly for them, theirs have been true witch hunts as they have never really had any facts to back up their accusations. so nothing comes of their goals to lock up their presumed enemies on the other side. the facts do rain down on their side.  it leaves me to think that either they are the most incompetent investigators that exist, they are wrong and the left isn't as evil as they say, or the left is incredibly brilliant and well connected so as to be able to exist in these insane conspiracies that the right creates.  the most logical is that the left isn't as evil....that it's really the right that is perpetrating all these crazy and illegal things they accuse the left of. 

i think we are just scaping the top of the hellscape  that the orange fool is involved with.  i suspect, like so many others, that these documents were meant to benefit him financially.  he was in deep with some of these leaders from rus and saudi.  he is a fool and it seems obvious that he would do illegal things to get in good with these leaders. a lot of money trails seem to lead that direction. we may not know for years how extensive the corruption in this administration was....we may never know all the details. 

they continue to defend him. they continue to spew insane and unprovable conspiracy theories on their "news" sites. many on the right only "trust" those "news" sources so they don't have a clue what is going on. 

they have been groomed by fundamentalist beliefs and the GOP to only listen and trust certain sources and to believe that all else are of Satan and lying. they have peacefully gone done a rabbit hole of insane conspiracies that if they really just looked at sensibly they would see how stupid these theories are.  they won't though.  they will just devour the meat that is delivered to them.  victimhood has become a way of life.  they are the last fighters in the run to the second coming...which has been coming for a few thousand years now. prophecies that never seem to come true. 

the orange fool had reams of government papers stored in a place that wasn't secure...he bathroom for one.  he had these boxes moved about to avoid them being taken away from him. he knew he couldn't actually just decide in his head to declassify things.  he lied to everyone, as he always does. he lied to his lawyers.  he just seems to use people for their complete loyalty to him and then he just as easily tosses them under the bus and moves onto the next victim.  it's all, always about him and what he can get out of things. 

it's kind of shocking that someone hasn't gotten pissed off enough with him to have killed him outright. he surrounds himself with fawning fools though who would be willing to die for him.  he's a cult leader and he has brainwashed a large percentage of our populance to buy into his bull.  sadly, many of those people have made their way into positions of power in our nation. it will be decades clearing this out and getting us back to some semblance of normalcy. will we ever? will i see it in my life time? 

mostly, i tell myself this is all the last stand for many who yearn for the old life that benefitted the few over the many.  they don't realize that many of them would have never benefitted in that life and will never if it returned. people like the orange fool see most of their voters as idiots that they can easily manipulate.  they are a used subgroup of people that would be kicked to the curb if needed. 

one poster was talking about how these NRA fools believe the founding fathers wanted well regulated militias that would protect against a corrupt government.  the founders were the ones who would be the corrupt government.  only land owning white males had power at that time. the last thing they would have wanted was a bunch of non-land owning, non white people having guns and to be able to take them out. the state militias were originally to quell slave uprisings. this amendment really lost it's original meaning when those in power decided we did need a standing military in this nation.  before that our military was very small. states did not want to send their milita members away from their states to fight for the larger nation because it would leave them vulnerable to slave uprisings and the other non land owners. 

it's nearly 11. i still need to feed the dogs and myself.  still trying to do the 12 hour fasts. don't think i've lost weight but i don't really ever weigh myself. need to do more exercises besides just walking. 

better get this day started.  i do enjoy a drive. Ivy is no fan of the seat belt. i like that they are more under control in the car though. even just when i have to brake hard.  they no longer go flying. 

when i got home from the dentist yesterday i just went back to bed.  it was a pretty lazy day after that.  some tennis ball time in the yard and computer games/reading. watching reruns. i have to turn off my brain some days i think. 

like this leaping shot of the sea lions.  

i have a few photo's to look through but i'll try to do that tonight perhaps.  paint some rocks. i need more rocks for hiding. i did hide one out at the glacier. 

another Birthday is in the rear view.  not really looking forward to 60.  seems crazy how fast it all really goes.  it's a gift though, each day.  so many never get this far.  i think being around all the death and loss has taken a toll on me as well.  just another reason to get away from the bedside. 

sometimes i think urgent care or infusion center.  day surgery, except they have to get there really early.  i'm no fan of really early. a lot of factors. 

it's all about winding down.  some have said, oh you will be bored in an urgent care...i'm ready to be bored i think. it is exciting and i think sometimes the reason i keep doing holds is that it's like some sick challenge for me.  i've mostly mastered some of the other units over the years so these holds are a less critical way for me to still get the challenge that i seem to need. i think many of us like/need that adrenal rush and do well under that pressure.  so strange really, that i can be so calm in absolute madness at work and yet, i can have so much anxiety in my day to day life.  i suspect it's just that in the day to day i am safe to feel the things i do not allow myself to feel at work in the constant crisis/stress of that world. 

thankful for A. the Alaskan beauty that never ceases to mesmorize me. B.  adventure days and lazy days and the absolute privilege i've had to enjoy both. C. the furs that keep me together and keep me sane and give me a reason to get out of bed on those days when i want to just do nothing.