Our Favorite Mugs

Every time we go on a trip, I keep my eyes open for a mug. It all started when students began giving me mugs for gifts. It's usually my only souvenir while Art keeps his eyes open for a t-shirt. He has a LOT of t-shirts, but he insists he wears ALL of them.

As for my mug collection...

Maybe not.

I have them all displayed in our cabinet, but as it happens, we use these same three mugs all the time. Mom uses her Butchart Gardens mug because it reminds her of the happy trip we took in springs of 2009 and last year. Every time she uses her mug, she thinks of the gorgeous blooms of the Northwest and Vancouver.

Ironically, my favorite mug was actually given to her by my brother and sister-in-law when they took a trip to the East coast. The mug is too big for her, but perfect for me and I love clear glass. I have a small collection of clear glass mugs as well.

Art, on the other hand likes this black mug because it's the right size for him and hides coffee or tea stains. I think he also likes the simplicity and the fact that it's inexpensive so if he breaks it, it won't bother him.

Do you have a favorite mug or do you alternate what you use? Do you have a favorite collection also?

Kitchen: Before and After

Ten years ago in March, 2006 we began our house renovation. Since we did a renovation of our home in Illinois, Art felt we could do it again. He neglected to remember that we were 20 years younger at the time.

Ah well... we're nearing completion now. Our goal is to be done by the end of this year.

I'm looking back now at photos of that construction progress. It makes me sigh to look at these photos of our kitchen. Since we would now be living with mom, we knew we needed a bigger kitchen.

The original kitchen was very small and combined the kitchen and dining room. We turned the entire area into a larger kitchen.

The first thing we did was to take away that center eating/storage cabinet and moved the refrigerator to the wall after moving out the stove.

We moved the stove to the opposite wall in what used to be the dining room and put the main sink next to the window so we could have more sunlight.

My cousin, Arnold then arrived to help us install the cabinets.

Our son, Keola had also arrived from the mainland to help us with our building project.

My brother, Dennis was always there helping with tile work, etc.

There was so much work to do, so many little details to get the house finished.

It amazes me to look back.

It makes me smile.

It makes me promise never to do this again!

The Truth About the Choctaw Girl

Last week we were saddened to see on the news, a video of a 6 year old Choctaw girl being wrenched from the home of the Pages, her foster family in California who had wanted to adopt her. They'd fought efforts under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act to place Lexi with relatives of her father, who is a Native American.

The news video highlighted the child being carried to a car crying and clutching a teddy bear while a group of people prayed, cried and sang from the house to the car.

The following morning, I happened to see an article about the sad case and read that there were other things that weren't reported on TV.

Apparently, Lexi has two other sisters in Utah. One is already living with the couple where she will be returned. Another sister lives down the street.

The law is written so that siblings should be kept together whenever possible.

The  Utah family had traded messages and monthly visits for the past several years and has a good relationship with Lexi. Lexi had been placed with her foster parents when she was 17 months old with the understanding that she was not to be adopted. Despite a court order not to release a minor's name, the Pages had started a Facebook page called "Save Lexi".

Despite all the years of appeals and protests by the Pages, the court felt they "had not proven clear and convincing evidence that it was a certainty the child would suffer emotional harm by the transfer."

This reminds me of Solomon's decision where two mothers claimed that a baby was theirs.

What bothers me, however is the fact that the TV news only gave half the story slanting public sympathy toward the foster parents. That was not fair reporting and I was disappointed in the coverage.

It all goes to show that before we form an opinion, we should make sure we have all the facts.

Preference Poll Pandemonium and Panic

It was a crazy, traumatic Saturday for us.

It began innocently enough. We decided to take mom to the Democratic Preference Poll for Hawaii just for the fun of it and to give her a different experience. We normally vote with mail-in ballots. However, because Hawaii's primary is held in August and the Democratic Convention is in July, a Preference Poll for the presidency was held this past Saturday.

The online information said polling places on Oahu would open at 11:00. We assumed we could vote once we registered. We waited in line and another voter told us that in order to register with the Democratic Party we would each have to pay $25 as she did several years ago. I told her that was pretty crazy because you can't charge people $25 to place a primary vote. She felt it was reasonable that if you were going to be a Democrat, you should support the party.

I got out of line to ask that quick question.... because let's face it. I'm not paying $75 to place 3 votes for an outcome I was already pretty convinced of.

Once we got in we asked if we had to register as Democrats if we'd already been voting the Democratic ticket in the mail-in voting for the past several years.

They said yes, but didn't know how to check to see if we were already registered Democrats. It took some time for them to figure that out.

We had to fill out forms with our IDs in order to register, but were then told we couldn't vote until 1:00 and that we had to be back by then because the doors would close!

Mom was hungry so we decided to run down and have a quick lunch. We then rushed back to the polling place.

Of course they didn't close the doors. It was more misinformation and there was a long line to get in.

By that point, the place was packed to the gills, but we found our precinct table.

In all the rush, mom's foot caught the edge of our bench in the cafeteria and she fell backwards hitting her head on the adjacent bench.

I was looking the other way when I heard the collective gasp of everybody around us. When I turned, there was mom on the floor holding her head.

Good Samaritans jumped to the rescue. One fellow went searching for ice and found Bernie supporters had a cooler. They kindly formed an ice pack for mom. A nurse and nursing student came over and quickly checked mom and saw that she seemed to be OK.

We had to sign up again with someone else, but were still not given a ballot. We had to wait until 1:00.

Several other people on our table already had ballots that were given to them by mistake. Whatever the case, at 1:00 we were all given a ballot en mass. Despite the chaos, everyone around us was kind, respectful and friendly as can be. It was amazing.

Parking was horrendous and Art had to jog far to get our car. Meanwhile the school polling place parking lot was chained so you couldn't park there.

Back at home, we told mom not to take her usual nap.

My nephew texted that we should take his grandmother to the hospital. Art had been insistent all along that I call Kaiser and ask the Advice Nurse what to do.

The Advice Nurse asked whether mom was dizzy, had a headache, or wobbling, etc. I said no. She seemed normal. However, because she was 86, they asked that we bring her in anyway.

Once there, all the nurses and attendants were shocked at how nimble and agile she was. They were going to help her off and on to another gurney to get a CAT scan, but she bounced on the CAT gurney by herself before they could do anything.

The CAT scan did not show any problems so we were sent home.

Notice her Bernie button? Yup, she neutralized my vote.

On the way home, we picked up some of mom's favorite Panda Express dishes.

The following Easter morning, Art had gone to the store and secretly bought a chocolate Easter bunny to surprise mom.

Then while she was icing her shoulder which was starting to ache, our friends Dave and Diane stopped over with a chocolate haupia pie. Oh my! She could hardly believe it.

Soon after that my brother, Dennis and sister-in-law, Nancy came by with char siu baus for our lunch.

Mom was absolutely reveling in all the attention. She can still hardly believe the excitement of this weekend.

Art and I can. We're exhausted.... and relieved.

Watching The Daily Show Again

I had been really missing watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. However, for the last couple of weeks Art and I have begun watching it with Trevor Noah. It took a while to get used to a new person, but I'm getting to enjoy the show again.

Lindsey Graham from South Carolina was on Wednesday night.

Since I figured he was a Super Conservative, I thought it was going to be a very uncomfortable program.

It wasn't. Actually, it was quite hilarious and I amazingly got to liking Lindsey Graham. Here's a link to USA Today's video segment from the show.

One funny part was when he said, “35 percent of my party believes that Obama’s a Muslim born in Kenya” and Trump has “locked that crowd down” while “the other 65% of us just think he’s a bad president."

After laughing or clapping for Graham, that remark got total silence.  To which he replied, "I don't get paid to do this!" Deadline Hollywood's website wrote a lot about that entertaining discussion.

He went on to play pool with Trevor Noah (the person who missed a shot had to do a Trump compliment) and spoke about his frustrations with the state of the Republican Party. I'm glad we've got The Daily Show to watch again.

Surprisingly, Lindsey Graham is a really good pool player.

Honolulu Aunty's Magic Lipstick

Meeting Honolulu Aunty on Monday was loads of fun. We absolutely enjoyed all the goodies she shared with us.

One of the surprises was a tube of aloe lipstick she gave me. I know she said it was lipstick, but I was positive it was some sort of lip balm because... gee... It was green. I didn't think she'd give me GREEN lipstick.

I applied it for fun last night to moisturize my lips. However, when I went to take a bath later, I was startled to see that my lips were a lovely shade of red!

What the heck! I'm forgetful so I wondered if I'd forgotten to remove the lipstick I'd worn earlier in the day.

Nope.

I applied some to my wrist and watched it turn color. Amazing!!! It also stayed on pretty well even when I tried to rub it off with a tissue.

Woooow!

Hanging Out With Honolulu Aunty

I wrote a post earlier about the toothpaste squeezers that we got from New Zealand.

The squeezer fit through my smaller toothpaste, but not my bigger tube.

Blogger Honolulu Aunty said she had one she could give me and offered to send it or give it to me personally.

We decided to meet at To Thai For restaurant in Kaimuki which was perfect because Art wanted to visit a cousin he hadn't seen in a long time who lived in the area also.

We gave ourselves tons of time to arrive at the restaurant well before we were scheduled to see her.

And.... we promptly got stuck in some kind of traffic jam!

That's when I discovered I didn't have her phone number in my cellphone! Yikes!

I called the restaurant and luckily the very kind and friendly owner (I think she was the owner) was able to find and let me talk to Honolulu Aunty.

We were 15 minutes late and found Honolulu Aunty quickly.  I  could spot her quickly by her hat. I should have been wearing mine!

The first thing we did was exchange cellphone numbers.

She and I both ordered Pad Thai and Art ordered a spicier rice dish.

As with many bloggers we meet, I felt like I already knew her.

However, there were many things we don't share on our blogs so we had lots to talk about.

For instance, I don't post photos of my grandchildren's faces on line, but I could show photos to her in person.

Before we knew it TWO HOURS had passed and we had to leave because we felt sorry for the server who was being so kind to still watch over us even though we were the only ones left at the restaurant.

We were totally overwhelmed by all the gifts Honolulu Aunty had brought us. There were papayas from her own yard, magnet note holders, lip balm (that's what I THOUGHT it was), a poinsettia cutting and even a Hello Kitty charm for my granddaughter!

And good gosh! A whole bunch of these toothpaste squeezers that work perfectly for my wider toothpaste tube. She wanted me to share them with my Zumba group. Won't they be surprised!

After leaving Aunty, we were able to stop to visit with Art's cousin a couple of blocks away and then head home.

Wow!

As I told Aunty later, every time I brush my teeth I'll be looking at her and remembering our awesome day!

Academy Award Gratitudes

Did you watch the Academy Awards this year? I guess not many people did. We watched it, especially because it was live this year, starting at 3:00 PM in Hawaii. That's a whole lot better than the 11:00 finish it used to be.

One of the biggest improvements for us was the little ticker at the bottom which scrolled all the names of people the winner wanted to thank.

It was always the most tiresome thing to hear people thank their manager, their accountant, their hair dresser, their.... on and on and on.

Many people this year hadn't gotten the message or didn't believe that it was being done because they couldn't see it on the monitor at the theater.

Whatever the case, it was so much better when winners would just say something that would be meaningful for the world to hear. I wish they'd done this long before, as soon as they had the technology.

I'll bet it would have helped their audience viewership.

2016 Annual 62nd Kunia Orchid Show

Once again a friend at tai chi offered us tickets to the Kunia Orchid Show which is held  at the Leilehua High School gym.

We've been taking mom to this orchid show for several years now because she's always loved orchids. She used to raise them until bulbuls decided they rather enjoyed plucking the buds off. They don't eat them. They just like to bite them off.

 As soon as we entered the gymnasium, mom was off like a flash trying to look at every flower and pointing out the ones she liked.

The bonsai club we belong to was there with demonstrations and displays.

This first teeny bonsai tree is a magnolia. The last one is a lone azalea.

Then there were the different types of floral arrangements. The one with the Legos was quite interesting.

 There were a number of these hanging type orchids.

 The variety of colors and shapes was pretty incredible!

These miniatures were really, really tiny. I should have put my finger next to it so you could see the relative size. The one on the left was a First Place winner.

This was the Unusual Orchid category.  And yes, they were definitely unusual.

For some reason mom liked the green colored orchids. She was quite busy telling us which photos we should be taking.

I rather liked these fuzzy orchids and sweet pink ones.

Everybody at the show seemed to be smiling and having a wonderful time. Like us, many brought their cameras.

Art noticed that our iPhone took just as good photos as my big Canon camera.

A friendly lady stopped us and asked if we'd like our photo taken. She said she couldn't help noticing how much mom was enjoying all the flowers.

Eventually, we did have to tear ourselves away to have our favorite saimin lunch at Zippy's.

When we returned home mom was smiling from ear to ear saying, "This was such a wonderful day."

It was.

Where Have All the Roaches Gone?

We have the ongoing saga of our tablecloth problem. Our first tablecloth was too light colored and got stained from Art reading the newspaper on the kitchen table each morning.

We bought a darker colored laminated tablecloth which would hide stains better, but mom didn't like it because it darkened the kitchen. I added the placemats which mom loved so it seemed the problem was fixed.

Nope!

When we went downstairs one evening there were a bunch of cockroaches on the table. Was it because the dark color made them think it was a good place to hide? We turned the table over to check for holes or crevices where cockroaches might want to hide. Sure enough, there were a whole bunch of screw holes which I caulked shut.

We wondered if the weave of the tablecloth might be accumulating food particles.

We considered not using a tablecloth at all, but the crevices for the table extensions would be trapping even larger food particles.

I looked online for a solution and found this plastic, heavy duty tablecloth for about $15 at Amazon. It's worked out great so far. Art reading the newspaper at the table can't stain the tablecloth! And
we never see cockroaches on the table anymore.

So where are they?

House Hint: Paint Touch Ups

While hard at work on the baseboards, etc. I thought of something I'd like to pass on to you again. I'm sure I've posted about this years ago, but I thought I'd do it again since I'm patting myself on the back right now that I did it.

Whenever you paint your house or rooms, keep some paints in an airtight container and label them.

We're working on finishing our house renovation that we started 10 years ago and this has been very, very convenient. Every so often there will be a scratch, stain or gouge on your walls and having this touch up paint is WONDERFUL!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody!

Was I Awake?

Have you ever had one of those dreams where it was so vivid and real that you woke up disoriented?

I had one of those the other night that I actually wrote down the next morning because it shook me up.

It all started when I woke up in the morning at 6:30. I checked the time as I do every morning. I did some stretches on the bed and then walked to the office and sat down at my recliner.

I wrote a blog post and was checking on email until I felt sleepy and then dozed off.

Something jostled me and I woke up with a start. I wasn't on my recliner. I wasn't in my office. I was in the bedroom on our bed. Art was not there. He'd gone to the bathroom which must have woken me. I looked at the time and it was 2:02.

And no, I don't sleep walk.

At least... I don't think I do.

Shining a Light on our Days

I saw this on Facebook and just had to share it with you all.

When told the reason for Daylight Savings Time the Native American said, "Only the government would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of the blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket."

Now that most people on the mainland are springing an hour ahead, I have to constantly remember this when I make calls to our kids.

What I disliked most about this when we lived in Illinois was having to change all our clocks twice a year. It was also even darker in the early morning until the days got longer. On the other hand, it was fun to have the longer daylight hours in summer.

We don't have to reset our clocks in Hawaii. What do you think? Would you prefer keeping Daylight Savings Time or getting rid of it?

Saying, "I Love You"

You might all remember the words, "Love means never having to say you're sorry" from the movie, Love Story. Actually, in a marriage, you really do need to say you're sorry.

However, there is a difference in the Japanese culture when it comes to saying the words, "I love you." I'm sorry or "Gomen nasai" is definitely used whenever needed. But I love you (Anata o aishite iru) is rarely said. It isn't said much to children or to spouses or lovers. Lovers are probably more likely to say "Anata o suki." (I like you.)

I asked mom about this because both Art and I were raised that way and don't use the words even with each other much unless he's just being silly with me. My children noticed this early on since living in Chicago, they saw their friends' parents saying it often.

Mom said that it's all part of the samurai spirit. Love is understood, it doesn't have to  be said. It's too powerful an emotion and is meant to be felt without words.

I asked my friend, Sam in Japan before I wrote this post and he said:

"Yes, please write a blog post about the Japanese custom of never saying the actual words.   Yes, that is true.  First of all, as you know, Japanese are shy, modest, respectful in expressing our feelings.  As a result the older generation like us would never say " I love you."  We have been told that "Love" needs to be created, accumulated with mutual effort over the years by couples after getting married. 

However the younger generation might have a different philosophy from us.  They are more aggressive, active and self-assertive using expressions of mutual "Love".  But, in my opinion, they are still hesitant to express their thoughts directly to each other. Most likely they would do so indirectly using different phrases.  They would not say " I love you" all the time as in other cultures.  Even if they do, it is going to be after a few years of marriage. And older people would certainly not.  I hope my answer helps you understand this.  I might be wrong.  Please correct me after talking to your mother."

Since Sam is a little older than me, I decided to also ask my cousin who is a couple of decades younger than me. He Skyped back this message.

"Japanese usually do not use "Aishite iru, I love you." It's because of being shy. However sometime, in important situations, they use " Aishitemasu".  Sometimes a lady (my wife) might ask her husband or boy friend to say " Aishiteru" to confirm their feelings and condition."

This cultural aspect of our personality really do make it hard for us to actually say those words. It feels forced. Since the feelings of love are so powerful, it seems the words actually  devalue the emotion. It's hard to explain.

The way to show affection is in the doing. It's in the smile. It's in the little things you do for each other. Japanese mothers sometimes make elaborate lunches for their children. Love is in every bite.

Oops! My kids got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sorry about that.

Between Art and me... It's understood. It's in the occasional hug. It's in the listening and sharing. It's in the way he cleans the bathroom for me. It's in his making mom's happiness a top priority for him. It's in every touch, caress and smile. 

But for all my non Japanese friends and relatives, please know how much I love you. I really do. I'm writing it here since you might not hear me actually say it.