Letting the Younger Generation Take Over

I used to stress over our family parties. Because we're the only ones who have a bit more space (not to mention street parking) to handle the get-togethers, it needs to be at our house. We've always felt it was important for us to have these ohana (Hawaiian word for family) parties. It would be sad to lose our connections to each other.

It was OK 10 years ago. Mom loved making her "famous" macaroni salad. Art and I were happily exhausting ourselves providing all kinds of dishes. It was always a pot luck so everybody brought something and there was LOTS of leftovers for everyone to bring home.

But now we're older. Mom has forgotten how to make any of her signature dishes. And I've felt like we were running around crazy all evening during the party making sure everyone had their drinks, getting the food set up, passing out leftover containers for everyone, getting the desserts passed out, taking coffee/mocha orders, etc. not to mention cleaning up afterwards. We were exhausted by the end of the evening.

That's when our daughter (who lives in Chicago) told us to stop killing ourselves and just buy some of the food, let younger family members help, etc.

It felt weird to think about letting go of the reins to keep everything running smoothly, BUT we did it for the last few parties. I assigned our nieces to take over a lot of the duties and the nephews joined in the clean up.

It was amazing. And it wasn't necessary for us to kill ourselves preparing so many dishes. The main thing was being together. This photo shows just some of the food that was set out. 

And for our last party which was a combination New Year/St. Patrick's Day celebration, I just marveled how things have changed since we let go of the control. When I started washing a few of the dishes, my nephew laughed and said, "You can go now, Auntie. I'll do it."

It was awesome... absolutely awesome!

And when everyone left, the house was back to normal, dishes were put away and everything was cleaned up. 

Best of all, Art and I had just enjoyed being with all our loved ones.

Wow!

The Monkey Method to Peeling a Banana?

When you're retired you might end up finding weird things to interest you. Art and I are both retired so yes, we do find weird things interesting.

Case in point: Art discovered that if he peeled his banana from the stubby end and not the stem end of the berry there would be a little black pointy nib.  

Yup. Bananas are berries. If you really want to know why they're berries, you can read up on it here.  Like bananas, these fruits all develop from flowers that contain an ovary, a fleshy center, and one or more seeds. This makes them berries - although in fact few people call them that. Berries are a small group of fruits, sweet, fleshy, with seeds inside. Bananas are considered berries and can be called fruit or berry.

Anyway, it got to be a contest between us to see who could get a longer nib.

This was the morning that I won. Check that out! See how long it is? Takes finesse to get that out without breaking it. 😂

At first Art told me it's the correct way to peel a banana and that monkeys do it that way. I'm afraid not. 😂 They're not that dainty. Apparently, they just bite right through the peel.

OK,  so this is how you're supposed to do it from IFL Science:

Holding the stalk in one hand, you can then squeeze the top between your fingers which (when ripe) will easily break apart. You can then peel down the edges of the banana without any awkward bending that could damage and soften the fruit.

You’ll also sometimes be presented the remains of the banana's flower in the form of a small, blackish nib which, if you’re not fond of, can be easily removed before you start eating.

Now you know how to peel a banana.  😁

Sigh... I need to think of something else to write about on Friday.

Chicago Spring?

Judy, one of my Chicago teacher buddies sent a funny explanation of Chicago seasons yesterday. I had to share it with you.

I was chuckling because my daughter texted a video last week showing snow falling. The week before, she'd been happy with 70 degree weather.

Sigh...

Here's what Judy sent me.

Such is life in Chicago.

Wait, they forgot Indian Summer.

And it looks like we might be going to Chicago during Hell's Front Porch.

 Sigh...

POSTSCRIPT:

By the way, we got our additional updated COVID vaccine yesterday at CVS. 

We didn't know about it until our friends told us they'd gotten it.  We had our last updated COVID vaccine in October, 2023. 

This is what I found on the CDC website:

• People aged 65 years and older who received 1 dose of any updated 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax) should receive 1 additional dose of an updated COVID-19 vaccine at least 4 months after the previous updated dose. For more Novavax information, click or tap here.

How to Keep Fresh Flowers Alive Longer

My cousin recently brought over white roses for us to enjoy.

 

He knows that mom loves flowers just as his mother (mom's sister), aunts and grandmother did. 

In fact, our grandmother (my mom's mom) even taught flower arrangement in Japan many, many moons ago. That's her on the right.

Whenever David gives us flowers, I feel it's my duty to make sure they last as long as possible.

I know some instructions my grandmother passed down to my mother was to cut the stems at an angle before putting it in a vase and to change the water daily in Hawaii where it's warm and bacteria can grow faster in the water.

The reason I started thinking about flower longevity was this cartoon I saw in the newspaper. I looked this up, but still don't know how true this is. Whatever the facts, I do take out wilted flowers anyway.

I found this website that gave a lot of good advice on keeping your flowers fresh longer. Love-n Fresh Flowers  

I thought I'd outline the highlights.

1. Change the water every two days. Like I said, I do this every day. I also don't fill the water too high because I figure it will just cause more bacteria to grow on the stems, but that's just me. I've seen some websites saying to fill the vase 2/3 high.

2. Trim about half an inch off the stems before you put them in a vase and every time you change the water. I keep the stems long when I first put them in a vase and move them to a shorter vase as the stems get shorter every time I trim them.

3. Keep the flowers away from heat and light. Yup. Definitely.

4. Avoid putting your flowers next to ripening fruit or vegetables like bananas and apples because they give off an invisible gas called ethylene. (I didn't know this.)

5. After your last arrangement, you should wash your vase thoroughly with hot soapy water or the dishwasher because the bacteria apparently does not go away. Oops! (Didn't know this either.)

6. Use the flower food that often comes with your bouquet.

7. Use a sharp scissors when cutting the stems so you don't damage the cells/tissue by smashing the stems. I actually use a sharp knife like my mom showed me and I slice it at an angle.

OK... I guess that about does it for me. I have to go wash the vases I used now.

Almost Frozen Shoulder

I had my first case of frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) over 20 years ago. I was still teaching and was experiencing right shoulder pain. (It was the result of doing some exercises with dumbbells.) When I called the Humana Nurse Helpline, she told me that I should rest and immobilize my arms. 

Unfortunately, that caused my first case of adhesive capsulitis. I had to go through 9 months of painful physical therapy to get my arm usable again. It was probably difficult for my students to read what I was writing on the blackboard since everything was now at my chest level. I got this diagram from the Mayo Clinic website.

In 2013, I don't know what I was doing but I was back at physical therapy for shoulder pain. At least this time I knew better than to immobilize my arms thinking it would heal. 

In 2020, I was working on scraping, plastering, sanding and painting our son's kitchen walls in Maryland with Art and BINGO! Shoulder pain again! I took Motrin which didn't alleviate the pain enough so I emailed my doctor at Tripler. She advised me to add Tylenol since it's a different class of drug. Anyway, I was able to keep moving my arm and I was able to cure myself.

And THIS TIME, as I wrote earlier, I was cleaning the tile grout using a toothbrush, baking soda and Dawn dishwashing liquid which caused my arm to start hurting a few days later. 

I had learned my lesson well from the past experiences and took Aleve while continuing to move my arm.

The Shoulder-73 exercise was especially valuable for me. 

I'd kept this sheet of exercises I'd gotten from the physical therapist.

I've got my shoulder mobility back now and am so grateful to my kind and knowledgeable physical therapists who have helped me throughout the years.

Contractor Art?

This is very goofy and I don't know how we can correct this. One of Art's cousins who we actually don't often see, recently wanted to call and thank us in response to a sympathy card we'd sent. She remarked that it brought her to the edge of tears because not many people actually take the time to write a personal message in a sympathy card these days. I have to say it is always one of the most difficult cards to write.

She didn't have our phone number so she looked it up online and said there were a lot of people with his name. Art laughed and told her it was all him. He's the only one in the U.S. with his name.

After their loving conversation, I thought I'd look up Art's name and was surprised to see this Linkedin website.

What the heck?!?

Let me make this clear.

Art is NOT an Independent Construction Professional!

I don't know how we can contact them to take this off their website.

OK, it's true Art has done a lot of construction work on our house.

This was in Illinois. 

We had the construction company put up the shell for an addition to our 3 bedroom home. They added a family room, a master bedroom and bathroom on top.

It took Art (I helped along with many, many awesome friends) about 7 years to finish the project on nights and weekends.

And then he added a deck that skunks and racoons liked to live under. 😏

And when we moved to Hawaii, we again hired a contractor to build a shell and it took Art (with many family members, friends, and me) another 5 years to complete.

Wait... hey...

Maybe he IS an independent construction (in his opinion) professional. 😂

Staring at My Hands

I was at a loss for something to write about and was looking at my hands and thought what stubby baby fingers I have.

I figured I should look this up online. You can find anything online.

Sure enough Wikipedia wrote about it:

Brachydactyly (Greek βραχύς 'short' plus δάκτυλος 'finger') is a medical term which literally means 'short finger'. The shortness is relative to the length of other long bones and other parts of the body. Brachydactyly is an inherited, dominant trait.

 So it's inherited?

I decided to check mom's hands. I use the ring finger line as a marker. Looks like mom's baby pinky is just a teeny bit under the crease line of her ring finger. 

I've always remembered how beautiful mom's hands were when she was younger. However, at 94, all the work she's done are showing the proof of it on her hands.

Then I decided to text my baby brother and asked him to send me a photo of his artistic genius hand. 

Nope. 

His baby finger is above the crease line.

So then I asked my favorite daughter to send me a photo of her hand. 

Yes... she was at work, but being my favorite (and only) daughter, she took a photo of her hand and texted it back for me. Hmmm.... She has beautiful hands. I think she inherited it from my mom. And nope. She did not inherit my stubby baby pinky.

It's too bad my favorite son lives on the other side of the world and was sleeping when I wrote this post. 

OK... Now what shall I write about for next week? 

I just looked at my feet. Nope. Never mind. My sister-in-law told my brother that I must have "time on my hands" since I'm staring at them.

What would she think of me if I asked him to send me a photo of his feet? 😂

POSTSCRIPT:

We were watching Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on TV. In the last scene Rey is burying Luke and Leia's lightsabers on Tatooine. She wraps the two lightsabers in a cloth to bury it and there is a shot of her hand.

Art startled me when he shouted, "Look! She has your baby finger!"

By golly! She does! 

Ahhh... Maybe I've got some Force too. 😂😂😂

OK... So Who's Older?

We get door-to-door Christians coming to our house about once a month. I'm surprised they don't just give up and tell each other that the people at our house would not be interested.

I've told them constantly that my grandfather (my mother's father) was a Buddhist priest and we are all Buddhists at our house. I've told them I respect their right to believe as they do, and I know they will respect my choice as well.

So then they sent a Japanese speaking person to talk to my mom. 🙄 I think it was upsetting for her and she felt harassed. 

The other day the doorbell rang (despite the NO SOLICITING sign we have next to our door) and Art went downstairs. He went down because my knees are hurting right now and the 21 steps are no fun.

Anyway, the ladies tried to talk to Art and he kindly told them what I always tell them. As he tried to end the conversation, she asked him if he knew that Buddha was also a Christian. 😳

Ummmm.... We already knew that Buddhism began well ahead of Christianity.

But this is Art. He just wished them a good day and that was that, for this month.

I mentioned this to my brother and he texted back tongue-in-cheek.

Well... I wondered about this and looked it up.

I guess we can all draw our own conclusions.

POSTSCRIPT: 

OMG! And look what I saw in the paper recently! So there are others who think of Trump as the "biblical devil!"

What's Real and What Isn't?

I was reading the news on my phone and got this advertisement.

It was about CBD gummies. 

The article is supposed to be from Entertainment Today and purports to cure diabetes and high cholesterol.

All you have to do is eat a couple of those gummies.

It also said Tom Hanks endorsed it.

Wow! I was wondering if this could be true but just thought I'd look it up. I found this from ABC news.

Ahhh... well...

You just knew if it sounds too good to be true, it must be too good to be true. It's so easy to be fooled online and on TV though. 

I wonder how many people bought it.

Heating Up Perfectly

When we were visiting our daughter, Tiffany last year we saw that she had a fancy electric water kettle. This was something new for us. We thought it might be something that would be good for mom with her worsening forgetfulness. 

Unfortunately, mom just couldn't remember how to use to it. However, we found that we really liked it for ourselves. 

We're able to measure out exactly how much water we want to boil, press the lever and it heats the water to boiling and turns itself off.

We'd gotten the 1 liter kettle because we thought it would be more manageable for mom, (OK, it was also the most affordable) but it's actually just right for me to handle too. I have to fill the water kettle twice to have the perfect amount to fill my container to make ginger tea.

Do you have any kitchen things you especially love?

Have a happy weekend, everybody!

Wishing You Shaka!

Whenever we're heading into town on the H1 highway, we see this fun painting on the Palama Settlement gym.

It starts with the shaka (pronounced "shah kah") sign on both ends that come together to form a heart. 

I thought it was pretty darn cool!

I looked up its history and found this.

I'm finding more people are now using the shaka sign to wave and say, "thank you" when you let them into your lane or whatever in traffic.

Coincidentally, I just saw something in our local news that a group wanted to copyright or do something to preserve the shaka sign for Hawaii because they were worried about cultural appropriation.

Apparently Las Vegas was starting to use the shaka sign too. 😏 

I imagine that's because a lot of local people from Hawaii have moved there. It's considered the 9th Hawaiian island.

When Art and our friend, Dave went to Tanzania and Dubai together last August, they showed the shaka sign to a lot of the local people there. 

The local people in both countries were happy to share their own special signs as well.

This is from Art's photobook about Dubai. Apparently, both countries have their own variety of hand signals. Three fingers forming a W was for win. Two fingers forming a V was for Victory. Index and thumb forming an L was for Love.

I remember our little granddaughter, KC used to flash the American sign language for "I love you" all the time. Gosh! This was a long time ago. I wonder if she still remembers.

Do you have any hand signals you use in your area?

POSTSCRIPT:

OMG! My friend, Kay (Would you believe another Kay?) sent me a shaka emoji! I had no idea Apple added a shaka to their emoji line.

I looked it up and saw this from Honolulu Magazine:

"There is FINALLY a shaka emoji. Hawaii's most beloved and universal hand gesture finally included in Apple's latest iOs update. Dec 17, 2016."

WARNING about my previous blog post:

I wrote a blog post earlier about using baking soda and Dawn dishwashing liquid to clean the grout on your tile floors with a toothbrush.

Uh oh... I'm writing this a few weeks later. After I did the floors with Art I was staring at the bathroom floor which wasn't as big as the kitchen and decided to tackle it myself.

A few days later, I found my right arm and shoulder killing me. I could tell it was in danger of becoming a frozen shoulder which is a very painful condition I've had several decades ago. It is NOT fun and could require physical therapy. To avoid that, I'm taking Aleve and moving my arm as much as I can.

This is just a cautionary advice. Be careful... please.

Really Giant Asian Mantis

On Friday morning, Art was sitting on his patio chair, putting on his shoes and was startled to see a humongous mantis on our recycling cart. 

Not wanting to handle it, he just took a photo to show me and left it there. He wasn't really wanting to touch it to move it elsewhere.

Art goes for his morning run on Saturdays at 3:30 AM.

It's dark.

He looked at the cart and didn't see the mantis so he picked up his running shoes, sat down on his chair and was about to stick his foot in and was super shocked to see the mantis right on his shoe.

He shook off the mantis in the grass and went on his run.

When he told me about it after getting back, I asked if he'd taken a photo of it. 

"This is blog material," I told him.

"You're kidding, right?" he said. 

So I went out to look for it and saw it was still in the grass where he left it.

As I tried to take a photo of it, the mantis started walking up the drain pipe. It boggled my mind that it could hold on to the slick surface with just his fingers and toes. 

I looked up what this mantis is called and found it's a Giant Asian Mantis.

I guess the creepiest thing about mantis is that the female will try to eat the male after mating to increase fertility. It says this will entail a struggle. No kidding?

After having our breakfast, I went to look for the mantis but didn't know where it went. 

I'm going to check my shoes before wearing them from now on.😬

POSTSCRIPT:

I was looking around for the mantis in the afternoon and found what I thought was him/her almost at the roof. But no... I think this is a different one. Good grief! I hope it's not mating season.

Art insists it's the same one with different lighting. 🙄

Blogaversary #16

It boggles my mind to think that 16 years have passed since I started my blog on February 29, 2008. It was a leap year. I remember then reading posts of some bloggers who had been writing for 5 years and thought that was a long time to blog. 

So much has happened since 2008. We moved to Hawaii from Illinois, bought my mother's house, had a contractor build a second floor shell on top and then worked for several years to finish the interior with friends and family.

My granddaughter was not even 2 years old when we sadly left Illinois. Two grandsons would be born in Maryland several years later. 

There was quite a bit of traveling. We took my mother on several trips which she thoroughly loved.

The years have flown by faster than I could ever have imagined.

Our hair is grayer and thinner. Art doesn't do marathons anymore. I don't walk very far. But I guess we're still traveling since I am married to someone who just loves to explore the world. We'll see where it takes us this year.