Monthly Archives: February 2021

Green Throne

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This poem is so incredibly lovely that I had to reblog it. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Na'ama Yehuda's avatarNa'ama Yehuda

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Not many could make stone into illusion.

She could.

Her hands carved softness into unyielding rock. Made age appear into the moss as if the stone itself shed velvet, hewed damp to seep from underneath the surface as if through the core of sighing cushions, long forgotten, left to rot.

Only it was not.

Instead of a discarded chair, it was a throne. A headstone.

A memorial to the man who’d scooped her out of orphaned desperation, who brought her here, who led her to her heart’s forgotten home.

She held the memories of his calloused hands atop her shoulders. Steadying her mallet, guiding her chisel, letting her learn. Letting her fail. Letting her know she was worthy. As was he. Just because she was.

His masonry was practical. Fences. Houses. Walls.

Hers sang to the forest floor as she carved. His armchair, reincarnated.

For eternity. Her parent of…

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Thursday’s Special: Pick a Word, February 2021

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Maternal
Guarding
Groundless
Variegated
Cohabitate

Maternal, Guarding, Cohabitation, Groundless, Variegated.

 

Thursday’s Special, Pick a Word.

Nesting

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Click on photos to enlarge.

Nesting

Boxes fit in boxes and rings fit inside rings.
In this world no end exists to these nesting things.
Other things just roll around looking for their place.
They fall out of one thing into another space.
There is some serendipity to when they finally fit,
but all of these repeating shapes will find a place to sit.
And though the more astute among us may find places faster,
those who roll around a bit may find a world much vaster.

The daily prompts today are repeating shapes, fallout, serendipity and astute.

Don’t Take a Painkiller before Your Covid Shot!!!

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Photo by Engin Akyurt on Unsplash

By Steven Reinberg

HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Feb. 18, 2021 (HealthDay News) — You finally managed to score an appointment to be vaccinated against the new coronavirus and you’re a little nervous about side effects, so taking a painkiller right before you get your shot seems like a smart idea.Not so fast, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Instead, the agency is telling people not to take pain medications like Motrin, Advil or Tylenol before getting their COVID-19 vaccines.

Why?

It’s possible that taking a painkiller before getting a vaccine will result in a “decrease in antibody response,” explained Dr. Gregory Poland, director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Although the odds of a diminished immune response aren’t really known, Poland said it’s better to suffer the side effects than take the chance of making the vaccine less effective.

“After receiving the vaccine, if one develops symptoms that they feel they want to treat, it’s fine, but ideally not before,” he said. “Now, that’s a recommendation by CDC, out of an abundance of caution.”

There are exceptions, however: People who usually take pain relievers, such as migraine sufferers, should of course take their medication, he added.

“Go ahead and take it rather than end up with a full-blown migraine and end up in the ER having to get much more intensive or expensive therapy,” Poland said.

He also noted that the aftereffects of the vaccine can differ between the two doses, with the effects after the second dose typically being worse.

“I’ll tell you after my first dose, I had a little bit of a sore arm. After the second dose, I had a moderately severe sore arm, and I had four hours of shaking, chills with a 101-degree fever along with fatigue, headache and ringing in my ears. I took one dose of Tylenol, went to bed, woke up the next morning and was 80% to 90% better, and within that half-day, back to normal,” Poland said.

These side effects are caused as the body’s immune system revs up to fight the invader, which is just what’s needed to produce the antibodies to blunt the virus.

Before getting vaccinated, people need to set their expectations appropriately, Poland said. “The symptoms are transient, they’re self-resolving, they are not an indication that something’s going wrong,” he said. “If need be, go ahead and treat them.”The CDC also cautions against taking antihistamines like Zyrtec or Claritin before getting the COVID-19 vaccine, “because they could mask the onset or development of allergic or hypersensitivity reactions,” Poland added.Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, agrees that it’s not a good idea to take a pain medication before getting a vaccine.”My general belief on this is it’s never a good idea to blunt fever, because fever is an adaptive part of your immune response,” he said.

“Let your immune system do its job,” Offit said. “The second dose was pretty rough. I had fatigue and fever, but I handled it by whining. Whining was my way of handling it.”

More information

For more on the COVID-19 vaccines, head to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

SOURCES: Gregory Poland, MD, director, Vaccine Research Group, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; Paul Offit, MD, director, Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, member, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee

WebMD News from HealthDay

Lavender: FOTD Feb 24, 2021

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For Cee’s FOTD

Worst Poem Ever

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Worst Poem Ever

Since today’s theme is brevity, it’s time that I must beat.
I’ll write my poem and then I will stage a fast retreat.
I must do the task alone and be focused and stalwart,
because you cannot simply go and buy a poem at Walmart!

 

Prompt words today are brevity, retreat, theme and stalwart. Photo by Manny Becerra on Unsplash, used with permission.

Joke of the Day

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Sorry, couldn’t resist, given my poem of the day:

The Sponsor

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The Sponsor

He’s the mafia of sobriety with eyes in every bar.
If you try to buy a six-pack, you won’t get very far.
You’ll be waylaid at the corner and he’ll confiscate your glow.
When it comes to who is tippling, he is always in the know.

His methods may be dodgy, but they seem to work.
His strategy’s to follow you—to tattle, spy and lurk.
You won’t see him in the the shadows. He is tricky and uncouth,
but your sponsor’s only doing it for you, and that’s the truth.

Do unto others only what you’ve wanted done to you.
He’s had it done to him and now he’ll do and do and do.
The path that you have taken is one he knows too well.
He knows this particular demon that you have to quell.

The bottle has long been your friend, but now here is another.
One was a two-faced comrade, but this one is a brother.
Two hands held out to you and it is up to you to choose.
Will you choose the brotherhood or will you choose the ruse?

Prompt words today are mafia, glow, sobriety and uncouth.

FOTD Feb 22, 2021: State of the Lot

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Here are photos of the current state of the little park I am building in the lot below my house. I just purchased the carved stone snake head and will form the body out of the small bushes that are currently laid out behind it. As the bushes grow, the body will flesh out more to scale. I’ll have a stone tail sculpted later after my bank account recovers from past projects. I bought one more sculpture as well, but you just see the uncarved back of it in the photo.  The four Dr. Seuss trees will be planted elsewhere in the lot, not in the positions where they currently are. Bit by bit, the neighborhood weed forest and dumping ground is turning into a thing of beauty. Stonework by Jose. Planting by Pasiano.  Financing and art direction by Judy.

Climate Shift

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Climate Shift

The lady’s mood was known to oscillate season to season.
One month she was crazy and the next given to reason.
Winter, in particular, seemed to fray her nerves,
when no truffles were available to top off her hors d’ oeuvres.

She saw inclement weather as a personal rebuff.
She simply abhorred snowflakes—their frigidity and fluff.
She wrote a letter to the mayor, for she knew it was a fact
there was a ban on nasty weather that he could enact.

The letter that she wrote him finally reached him in December,
but in the rush of Christmas, he neglected to remember
that she had made demands until the New Year celebration
was over, whereupon he said he’d take a small vacation

to try to conduct research in a sunnier location—
perhaps a South American or Carribean nation—
to see just how they managed to defray this colder weather.
Then he’d fly off to another just to further study whether

just what, if anything, there might be to be done
to do away with winter and attract more sun.
His efforts were so thorough that , booking after booking,
when he didn’t find an answer, he had to go on looking.

From Belize to Barbados, Aruba to St. Kitt,
the solution kept evading him, yet he sought after it.
Then, finally, in June, the lady got her wishes.
No snowflakes on her shoulders and truffles for her dishes.

For when the mayor came back from his research in milder lands,
He brought the sun back with him, thus meeting her demands.

Prompt words today are oscillate, particular, month and rebuff.