Before HIPAA

October 18, 2025October 18, 2025 Sally3 Comments

I’ll admit — it’s a semi-irrational fear that I have of getting a fishhook stuck through my skin.

It may date back to the days when my father’s office was just off the Emergency Room. HIPAA hadn’t been born yet. I would cut through the Emergency Room to get to his office.

Which was a trailer.

Yes, it’s what you picture — the kind of structure that fills trailer parks.

When I got into the trailer, his office was on the left, opposite his secretary’s desk. Sometimes she was transcribing his dictated notes and would let me listen to his voice on the transcription machine as he said things like, “The patient was a white female, age 47, who presented with…”

Clearly another HIPAA violation. But HIPAA wasn’t a thing then. And I wasn’t paying attention to the words as much as his voice.

True story: These days I recognize people by their voices. More than once I would have walked right past my high school boyfriend had he not greeted me by name.

The other day, another person that I knew years ago walked past me and said, “Hey, Sal!”

The words got my attention, but the voice identified the speaker. I immediately knew him.

I mean, seriously, most men over the age of 70 look remarkably similar to me: gray hair or balding, scruffy beard, blue jeans, etc. Add a baseball cap and I’m sunk — until I hear their voice.

But I digress. I guess that’s how it is with stream-of-consciousness writing.

So, as a kid, I would cut through the Emergency Room on a daily basis. My pattern was to swim at the gym after school and walk to the hospital for my ride home. I would wait for my father to finish his day and we would walk together to his vehicle which was ALWAYS parked in the farthest spot available.

“It’s good exercise,” he would say as I complained about walking to the car.

One time, I saw one of my classmates in the ER. He had stabbed a pitchfork through his foot. Actually, through his work boot, and his foot, and out the other side. He was crying and cursing, obviously not having a good day.

I remember his name — but I won’t say it here. HIPAA and all that, you know.

The fishhook thing must date from those days. I think I saw someone in the ER with a fishhook in their cheek.

My father said, “They’ll just push it through and cut the barb.”

He made it sound easy.

But then, he didn’t have a fishhook in his cheek.

I remember my father explaining to me how the manure pitchfork through the foot presented a particular problem because of the risk of infection. Should they just pull it out? Cut the tip and pull it out? I think that’s what they did.

It doesn’t matter. The prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday wasn’t pitchfork. It was hook.

I can’t decide if I like stream-of-consciousness writing or not. It feels like a bunch of blather.

What do you think?

At the Beginning

October 11, 2025 Sally20 Comments

At the beginning
Of my journey into conservative Christianity
I heard this sermon:

“If Christians were rounded up and put on trial, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

And I thought, Of course there would be. I know my Bible. I pray. I have memorized countless verses.

But then, at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, when Christians were condemning homosexuals and saying this disease was proof of God’s judgment on their immoral lifestyle, my brother, a Presbyterian minister, honored people with AIDS and their caregivers by having a dinner for them at his church. I thought about that action for years. Now there’s a conviction.

In the middle
Of my thirty years of homeschooling
I heard a homeschool convention speaker say:

“Ninety percent of homeschoolers vote in national elections when they are old enough to vote. That fact alone should have politicians shaking in their boots.”

And I thought, That’s a pretty remarkable fact. That’s a lot of power. Dear God, may they use it wisely.

But then, I watched my own homeschool convention heroes fall one by one. Joshua Harris renounced his faith. Cheryl Lindsey was excommunicated. Doug Phillips had an affair. They all are, after all, very human. And that voting power is a little scary.

And now,
I watch “Christians”
Wielding a sword and showing no love.

Dear God, I pray, convict me of compassion. May there be evidence of that in my life. Not power. Not judgment. Just kindness.

This is my submission to SoCS where the challenge was to write a stream-of-consciousness post using the words, “at the beginning.“

It’s also a response to the W³ Challenge this week in which the poet of the week challenged us to use one or both of the following images and write Prosimetrum or Versiprose: both forms combine alternating passages of prose and verse.

Life · Writing

Decision Making

May 17, 2025 Sally8 Comments

My youngest daughter is faced with a challenging decision. She and her current roommate are moving into a new apartment. It’s two bedroom, two bath, but one of the bedrooms has a bath attached while the other bedroom would use the common bathroom.

“The one with the private bath is clearly the better one,” she told me. “How do we choose who gets it?”

Draw straws? Flip a coin?

One of her sisters suggested they each bid on the room. How much more would they be willing to pay for the room with the private bath? Later, though, she said that would kill their friendship. Both girls would feel resentful — one for the privacy, the other for the money.

I asked dilemma-daughter again the other day. “Did you figure it out?”

“No,” she said sadly. “This is so hard!”

And yet I think we both know that if this is the hardest decision she has to make in her life, her life will have been pretty easy.

It’s less about making the right decision, and more about being able to sit with whatever decision is made. She will have another hard decision next week, next month, next year. Another opportunity to move on and not second-guess.

I think that’s called living.

This is my post for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, where the prompt was “Straw.”

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in this weekly prompt, but I’m trying to get those creative juices flowing again.

Blather

Weird

September 29, 2024 Sally5 Comments

The Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS) prompt for today is “i before e.”

Earlier today, I had had a conversation with someone who remarked how he still remembered and leaned on that rule.

“Kind of weird,” I said.

He didn’t get it.

Weird is such a great word — and it’s weird that it doesn’t follow the rule, even when the rhyme is completed — “or when sounded ay as in neighbor and weigh.” We don’t pronounce it wayrd. Weird.

I looked the rule up to make sure I was saying it right. There is funny stuff out in internetland.

How about this one: “I before E unless you leisurely deceive eight overweight heirs to forfeit their sovereign conceits.”

Weird, right?

Ooh, ooh! Here’s another: “I before E except when your foreign neighbors Keith and Heidi receive eight counterfeit beigh sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters. Weird.”

I had to look up the word beigh: a provincial governor in the Ottoman empire. I suppose an alternate spelling to Bey.

Or maybe they meant beige.

Or maybe I misread it — I am, after all, trying to do stream-of-consciousness writing, not look-up-funny-things-and-copy-them writing.

Good golly, there are a lot of them. They refer to overweight reindeer and beige sleighs involved in heists.

I kind of stream-of-consciously wrote this last night and meant to post it, but I fell asleep.

Weird.

family

Chickens

June 29, 2024 Sally7 Comments

Egg. The answer is egg.

I was 8 or 9, maybe even 10, when I went off to 4-H camp. There I took an embryology class.

I remember walking into the dim classroom in the old building at the camp. An incubator on a table held several dozen eggs. A few had the cracks started where the chick was starting to peck its way out.

When I stop and think about it now, eggs are a pretty marvelous invention. The hen and the rooster do their thing and a fertilized egg is laid. In that egg is everything a chick needs to grow for the next 3 weeks. The egg just has to be kept warm. Mammals are so much more taxing on their mothers, right?

Anyway, I was at 4-H camp where day after day we watched the miracle of chicks hatching. They would emerge kind of wet and sticky, but their little feathers would quickly fluff out. They would run around their little enclosure peeping and looking very cute.

At the end of the week, the 4-H leaders asked if anyone wanted to take chicks home. We had an unused chicken coop on the property, so I called my dad on the big green rotary dial phone in the camp office and asked if I could bring home some chickens.

He thought I said “a” chicken, so he said I could.

When I arrived home with 19 little chicks, he was quite surprised — but he got to work on the chicken coop, cleaning it out and fixing the fenced-in run behind it.

It turned out they were Polish chickens, black with a white topknot of feathers. It also turned out that of those 19 chicks, 13 were roosters.

Me — with a chicken on my head and a cast on my arm. Typical.

I hauled water up to the chicken coop every day, and scattered chicken feed in their pen. I learned what a pecking order is in real life, not middle school. The six hens started to lay and I collected the eggs.

One Sunday afternoon, my parents took me to town to watch a movie at one movie theater in town. This was a rare treat, and I didn’t stop to question why.

However, when I got home the roosters were gone. Well, kind of gone. Let’s just say that they became chicken soups over that winter.

I experienced the full circle of life with those chickens.

My father then took up the hobby and raised chickens for many years.

But the egg — at 4-H camp — definitely came first.

This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: Chicken or Egg

Writing

Water

June 22, 2024 Sally2 Comments

When I first saw the Stream of Consciousness prompt for today — water — I immediately thought about a quote that I had jotted in my journal a few days ago.

“Let us bless the humility of water
Always willing to take the shape
Of whatever otherness holds it.”
John O’Donohue

He also blessed

“The buoyancy of water,
Stronger than the deadening,
Downward drag of gravity”

I’ve always been a water person. Being in or near water is a happy place for me.

When I don’t feel well, I take a bath. One of the times I was in labor, I sat in jacuzzi to relax and almost didn’t make it out in time. Aches and pains seem to diminish in the shower.

I love to swim — for the exercise, the mental health, the solitude, the refreshingness of it.

I love to sit in the presence of water and hear the gentle lap of lake waves or the bigger crashes and rhythm of ocean surf.

I love to stand on a bridge and watch the water rush, flow, trickle — whatever that day brings — underneath. I love to drop a stick or a leaf or a flower in on one side, then watch it emerge on the other. Sometimes the object gets caught in an eddy and swirls in circles for a bit before moving on or under or off to the side.

Water supports me and yet offers resistance when I exercise in it.

If I could sing the praises of water, I would, but it would be a poor song in comparison to the song water sings itself. Murmurs, gurgles, steady streams, rain drops on windows or the roof.

Even the smell of rain is a wonder.

Blather

Questionable Plans

June 8, 2024 Sally7 Comments

What should I do today?

It’s gray out, or, I suppose, grey if I lived in Scotland, where I think it’s often gray/grey.

Is Canada gray or grey? Now there‘s an important question, right?

I mean, they do add those extra “u”s as in favour, colour, and honour. Is that their French influence?

But back to the question at hand — what to do today? The weather looks less than inviting which is where I was going with that other word that we won’t debate the spelling of right now.

It’s been such a long week work-wise. I kind of don’t want to use my brain for the indoor paperworky sort of work that needs to happen. Can I just veg out? Will people judge me if I do that?

A friend recommended a rom-com to me — Falling for Figaro — because it’s set in Scotland. They knew I love Scotland even though I’ve never been there. Even though the weather is often gr–, um, overcast.

I suppose I could snuggle up under a blanket with a bowl of popcorn and watch that movie.

Should I?

That’s really the question, you know.

Time is this commodity that we can’t put a price on. We can’t hold it. We can’t really save it. We can’t do anything but use it. I want to use it wisely because I know I’ve wasted so much in my life.

So, I ask you — What should I do today?

This is my response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: “start with a question.” Begin your post with the first question that comes to mind when you sit down to write your post.

What are you going to do today?

Life

Getting Old

May 25, 2024 Sally7 Comments

I almost titled this post “My Left Hip,” because, dang, my left hip is hurting today.

Oh, it’s been hurting for a while. I thought it had to do with my hip flexor, but when stretching and rest didn’t help, I got an x-ray.

The results came back and I had to look up half the terms — “diffuse osteopenia” — the predecessor to osteoporosis. At least it’s NOT osteoporosis, right? “Subchondral lucency in the left acetabulum” — this has something to do with osteoarthritis, I think?

In any event, I have to wait until mid-June to see someone in Orthopedics.

In the meantime, I keep moving. Sitting hurts. Standing up from sitting is THE WORST.

But standing and walking are fine. I actually feel better after a good walk.

So I tell myself throughout the day, “Get up and move.”

There are people in the “rest” camp. They say things like, “You must rest.”

Trust me, though — rest doesn’t help. Lying in bed — the ultimate rest, right? — can be painful. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and feel the pain radiating from my hip down my leg.

So I listen to my body and move as much as I can during the day.

Yesterday, however, I overdid. I won’t even tell you what I did, but it was strenuous and it was a mistake. My left hip is hurting today.

Seriously, who has time for this stuff?

Thank God for Advil.

This post was inspired by my left hip and Linda Hill’s “Stream of Consciousness Saturday” whose prompt today was “move.”

Life

I Thought I Knew

May 18, 2024 Sally11 Comments

Yesterday, when I went into work at 5 AM and entered the building, I thought I smelled something.

What’s that smell? I thought.

Smells niggle, don’t they — tickling some unreachable place in the brain.

Oh — I knew the smell, or at least thought that I did.

Cannabis.

I shook my head. I certainly was not going to be the one who turned in someone on the night cleaning crew, but sheesh, they should know better. What you do on your time is your business, but what you do when you’re on the clock — not so much.

It was about an hour later that one of my early morning co-workers came by to see me.

“Did you see that this morning?” he asked.

“What?” I replied, somewhat confused. I had seen nothing unusual on the way into work and we both drive the same route.

“Right by the side door,” he said, gesturing with his chin to the door he uses. I actually use a different door when I come in.

I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything,” I said.

“You must have smelled it then,” he said.

I shook my head again.

“That huge skunk?!” he said. “It had obviously just sprayed, but I was worried it might try to get me too! We were that close.” He indicated a spot about 5 yards away.

I shook my head now for a different reason. Do skunk and cannabis smell similar? A quick google search affirmed that they, indeed, DO smell somewhat alike.

I thought I knew what I was smelling.

Guess I was wrong.

Sorry, night guys!

This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: What’s that smell?

I haven’t done SoC writing in a while — too busy, too tired, life too full, all the excuses. When I read her prompt this week, though, I had just had my cannabis-skunk experience so I wrote it out.

Life · photography

Visiting British Columbia

February 18, 2024 Sally3 Comments

It even says it on their license plates, Beautiful British Columbia, as if our eyes are deceiving us. Yes, this is a beautiful place.

I had to fight the urge of pulling over on my drive up from Seattle to take some pictures. The mountains are breathtaking. The trees stand tall, erect, pointy and somehow brave.

It’s so very different from the Northeastern US, where the mountains are lovely, but older. The trees are also lovely, but more are deciduous; they seem to go with the flow of life instead of the unmoving strength of those giant pines.

Ah, I know, I’m probably way off base. The oaks and maples have deeper roots, right? And I’ve seen tall pines toppled with their root system, shallow and broad, turned on edge like a wall.

But this is my submission for Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday — a day late — and I’m not going to go back and correct what may need correction. When I saw that the prompt was “Photograph,” I thought, Yup, I’ve taken a few photographs over the past few days.

We’ve gone walking every day. Two days ago, my son and his wife wanted to take me to see some glorious vista — which I’m sure would have led to not a few photographs. However, we started up the logging road and it got steeper and steeper and steeper.

“Are we there yet?” I quipped two minutes into the hike.

Twenty minutes in, after a couple of rests, I asked them to guesstimate if we had gone a quarter of the way yet. He studied the map on his phone. “Umm…. maybe just under a quarter,” he said.

We turned back at my request. I walk A LOT, just not straight uphill.

Instead we walked along the Fraser River which was lovely. The only photograph from that walk was of an immature eagle who stared down on us as we passed.

Yesterday, we walked along the Vedder River, a river which changes its name to Chilliwack once it passes under a bridge, so I saw the Chilliwack River, too. In fact, I only photographed the Chilliwack.