Remembering...

I couldn't think of what to write about for today so I decided to look back at memorable times of my life. When I think about it, the 70's had a lot of significant moments in my life.

In 1970, I was going on a college Art & Architecture, 6 week trip to Japan. I would be traveling with the class for 3 weeks visiting significant places and going to the Osaka EXPO. Then 3 weeks could be with friends on our own. The cost for the whole three weeks + airfare would be $600. Pretty darn amazing! 

Mom said I should go and budgeted money for the trip. HOWEVER, for those 3 weeks on my own, Mom said I needed to visit my grandparents in Sendai and meet her family who I'd never met before. 

My grandfather was a zen priest. He and my grandmother took me on trips to see where he trained to be a priest and visit other places important to the family. I also met uncles, aunt and cousins I barely knew existed. It was a wonderful, incredible time of awakening and I grew to love them all. 

In late summer of 1971, I met Art and he proposed on New Year's Eve. That was a big change in my life and in his because he left the Air Force and enrolled at University of Hawaii to get his MS in Public Health. We married in January, 1973.

And then, in 1974 Art got a job with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency so we drove cross country from California to Chicago.

It was leaving everything I knew to live in what felt like a foreign country.

I'd heard about prejudice on the mainland. I wondered if my Hawaii accent would be looked down on. I wondered about the winter weather. 

My brother came along to help with driving. He and Art have always been great buddies.

And yes, it was a HUGE adjustment to move from Honolulu to Chicago. I've written a lot about that in my posts.

In fact, one of the first people I saw when we entered the city was somebody carrying a violin case and I thought about the gangsters carrying machine guns in violin cases I'd seen in movies or my imagination.

And also in the 70's was the birth of our two children. The births of both Tiffany and Keola were very traumatic. Tiffany's birth was very difficult. And of course, Keola was born in the Great Lakes Naval Base hospital elevator where Art had to deliver him by himself. Art will tell you that was a highlight of his life.

And then I was able to be there for my first grandchild's birth in 2006. I saw how overjoyed our son-in-law was to see his daughter. I was stunned to see how far medicine had progressed to make childbirth so much easier and comfortable. KC was a beautiful baby and even more so now. 

In 1996, Art and I took Tiffany and Keola to Japan to meet their extended relatives and see different parts of a country they'd heard about but didn't truly know.

My grandmother loved meeting her great grandchildren for the first time and instructing them on the proper way to show their respect for the ancestors who went before them at the gravesite in front of my grandfather's temple.

There would be more memorable events in the years to come. 

But that will have to be another post someday.

Thank you, Aachan

I know my son is busy and can't write letters or text very often from half a world away. However, he took the time to write a thank you to mom who my children and grandchildren all call Aachan. 

Aachan is a nickname for Obaachan which is Japanese for grandmother. My grandmother in Japan was called Aachan so mom inherited the title here in Hawaii. It's also to prevent confusion for my grandchildren because it would be a bother for them to call mom Great Grandmother all the time.

When Mom opened the card from Keola, she was stunned and thrilled that he took the time to write in Japanese to her. (He's actually done this before but she forgot.)

"This is so beautiful!" she gushed. "The sentence structure is perfect. His words are perfect. I didn't know he could write so well."

And so on and so forth. 

"Well... there is this one little error in the kanji" (Japanese character), she said. "But everything else is perfect."

She marveled over and over how wonderful his card was.

Later in the evening, I used the camera I have in the family room to check on her and saw this.

She was still happily reading and re-reading his card. 

Mom has Alzheimers so each time she reads the card, she is feeling that wonder and happiness again that her grandson took the time and could write to her in Japanese.

Uuuuummmm.... 😆

I did not tell her that Keola uses the Google Translate website to change his English words to Japanese. (She wouldn't understand the concept.) He then just transcribes the characters onto the card.

I guess it never occurred to her how strange it was that his proficiency in Japanese would be better than mine when he only learned Spanish in school when growing up in Illinois. 😂

I'm proud of him for caring enough to take the time to give his grandmother such joy.

House Crickets?

I went into the family room the other night and saw something on the carpeting. I thought it was a dead roach.

But when I picked it up, I saw that it had long legs and a long antennae. It didn't look like any kind of roach I'd seen before. So I took photos of the front and back and used Google lens to see if it could identify it.

Sure enough! There it is! It's a tropical house cricket. But why is it in the house? There's a lot better things to eat outside like that persistent bleeding heart weed we're trying to get rid of.

So I researched it online.

What?!? They eat fabric? I've read elsewhere that house crickets will eat synthetics also. Was it trying to eat the carpeting? Arrghhh! 

Wait a minute! It's attracted to messy, cluttered environments? Excuse me! That family room is where mom hangs out and it is very neat and tidy. She is a neat-aholic. She may be forgetful but she doesn't like clutter. 

Well, male crickets are supposed to sing and I haven't heard anything... yet.

Have you seen house crickets before? Did they cause a problem for you? 

Having a Wicked Time

We have not gone to the movies since the pandemic started. Once it seemed OK to go to the movies again we couldn't because we needed to be home with mom. Even though we started sending her to a day care she loves two and then three days a week from 7:30 to 3:00, we had other necessary things we needed to do which took up that time. 

Recently, mom's geriatric doctor asked her how she liked going to her "Senior Club." (That's what mom calls it.) Mom told her she loves going because it's a lot of fun and she gets to talk to all her friends.

Mom's doctor told us we needed to send her more often, not just for her sake, but even more importantly for us because as caregivers, we needed to preserve our well-being also. 

So we've started sending mom to the day care 5 days a week. Unfortunately, the movie we wanted to see was Wicked that starts at 1:10 and ends close to 4:00. My brother would be picking her up at 3:00 and bringing her home by 3:15. Not to worry, Dennis said he would watch over her until we got home. 

OK... Now that was set. What to do. First off, I needed to add a light jacket in a bag for both of us because the theater is often too cold. I had cough drops in case we needed to cough (you can never tell, right?). 

We left home around 12:30 because we didn't want to be late. That turned out to be MUCH TOO EARLY. Tickets were now to be bought at the concession stand inside the theater and not outside at the ticket booth. And the doors were still shut. 

12:45 The doors opened. We got in and ordered a LARGE popcorn so we could refill it for free to bring home and enjoy.

We went to look for our seats in the theater and was surprised to see it empty. Eventually, 8 people who knew better entered just before the movie started.

At around 1:00 the blank screen was finally replaced with commercials, and then previews and more commercials and more previews. (Good thing I had my ear plugs because the speakers were crazy loud! I do carry a ton of things in my little backpack.)

We'd seen the stage version of Wicked in Chicago many, many years ago. The movie was obviously adapted from it. Art liked it better because he said he could hear/understand the lyrics better. 

I rather liked the stage version better. My daughter and most (all?) of our friends liked the movie better. In fact they liked it a lot.

When it was over, we hadn't gotten our popcorn refill but the line was too long and we didn't want to keep my brother waiting so we headed home.

And you know what? 

It was really great to be out. We really did have fun. 

I think we should do it again. 😁 Do you have any recommendations?

Finally! No Charity Mail!

Art once worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Therefore reducing waste and preventing pollution is very important to him and of course, to me also.

We'd been getting a TON of charity mail in the past years, probably because one of our goals at the end of the year is to send out donations to the causes that are near and dear to our hearts. Art researches the Charity Navigator website to make sure the organizations we contribute to are using their resources efficiently. I found this by Google AI. 

When contributing to a charity, look for evidence of a clear mission statement, transparent financial reporting, a track record of effectiveness in achieving their goals, reasonable overhead costs, and independent verification of their impact through sources like Charity Navigator or similar rating organizations; essentially, ensuring your donation is being used efficiently to address the intended cause.

I know I wrote on previous posts how I started writing emails to organizations who were sending us multiple mailings and selling/giving our names to other organizations.  

This is what I wrote:

Hello,

Could you please remove our name from your mailing list. You have a wonderful organization and want you to use your resources efficiently.

Our address is:

--

Thank you very much,

Art and Kay

P.S. Would you also please not share our name or address with other charity groups AND would you add me to your suppression list so that even if another organization shares my information with you again, you will not continue to send mail to us.

I then began keeping track of what charity mail I was getting, how many multiple mailings from the same group we were still receiving and who I had already sent a request to and gotten a confirmation.

And you know what?

The only charity mail we've received recently are receipts from organizations who we have donated to. 

AND, we're also getting more of these notices from the USPS telling us we're not getting any mail for the day. OK. OK... I won't write about Charity Mails anymore.

Oho... the sun is up. I can turn on the dishwasher now so that our power is coming from our solar panels instead of the electric company. 

Every little bit helps our environment. 😄

Something Cool

You'll probably realize now that I didn't have anything to post for today so I'm just going to share something with you that my friend, Myra introduced me to a week ago.

We always meet up with Myra and her husband for tai chi. When we arrived at their house, Myra handed me a cough drop. She said she likes to carry a couple in case she needs to cough during our sessions. I stuck the cough drop in my pocket and we walked to the park to begin our lessons.

Midway through, I decided to try it. So there I am going through the movements when my throat and sinuses suddenly felt open, cool, fresh... oh gee... hard to explain. It was great!

So then, the following day I'm walking with my friend, Diane and I mentioned it to her. Wouldn't you know she just pulled one out of her fanny pack and showed it to me? Am I the last one to try this thing?

I mentioned it to Art and he says he'd like to try it too since he often has a little cough, but he wants the sugar free version.

Have you ever tried this?

POSTSCRIPT: Aha! We found the sugar free version at Walmart. 

Art tried it and said it works but the effect only lasts about 15 minutes. 

Ah well...

Tiffany and Keola Through the Years

An article in the New York Times caught my eye one morning. It was about a photographer who started taking photos every year for 40 years of 4 sisters. 

It was intriguing to see the sisters mature from when they were in their 20's to their 60's.

So anyway, I had this bright idea which took me an entire day to complete. I could manage finding photos of our children from every year when they were younger and at home, but when they left home, it got a bit trickier.

I had to look for photos that had just the two of them which was easy when they lived at home. In fact, I had too many (and I just couldn't choose) so sometimes, I put more than one photo of them in for that year. 😁

When they left home and Keola started living in different parts of the world, it got trickier to find a photo of them together so I had to just select photos of them separately. But this was just for a few years because Keola made it a point to come together whenever it could be managed. 

Keola was in Mali with the Peace Corps in 2002, but he came home to be part of Tiffany's wedding party.

I was happy that I could compile 46 years of their lives.

I uploaded them to an album on the Google Photos app and added dates and information on what was happening in the photos.

I think what makes us most happy and proud is the love and friendship that has bound these siblings together throughout their lives. 

Here they are in 2023 when we all came together in Tokyo from different parts of the world.

When I think about it now, my younger brother and I have also shared that same bond. And you know what? Art and his older sister (whose name is also Kay 😂) are still very close and talk to each other every Saturday. 

I guess we're all very lucky.

And yes, the kids were very, very happy to see the Google Album of their lives together when I sent them the link.

Belated New Year With Family

Our belated Family New Year party was wonderful as always although we missed my sister-in-law who had caught a cold and didn't want to come and possibly expose mom to whatever germ she might be harboring. My nephew's wife also had a prior engagement.

Everyone brought a lot of traditional Japanese food which we really appreciated. Mom used to love making her traditional nishime which is a classic Japanese dish with root vegetables like gobo root, seaweed, carrots, chicken, etc. It's a lot of work and she's forgotten how to make it. It didn't matter. We have a wonderful cousin and niece who are from Japan and provided a lot of the wonderful traditional dishes. 

Art and I cheated and bought (non Japanese) orange chicken, walnut shrimp from Panda Express and teriyaki beef from L&L. My brother brought sushi that he also bought. 

There was a time in Illinois where for many, many years Art and I would make tons of sushi and pass them out to our friends. When we were preparing to move back to Hawaii, one of our friends asked, "But who will make sushi for us this coming New Year?"

Sigh... we just don't have the energy anymore. It was time to pass the torch to the younger generation.

The Japanese have a LOT of traditional New Year dishes and we decided to buy the kuromame and kazunoko for everybody. 

But wouldn't you know that I totally forgot to take it out until everyone was just about done with their meals? 😏

Sigh... What does that foretell of my memory as well?😳

Whatever the case, everybody was just happy to be together again. The best thing of all was the younger members of our family taking over the packing away of food, helping to dish out desserts, and getting the pot luck left overs packed for everybody to take home.

And yes, mom loved it all and we took photos to remind her of what a happy time she had.

Happy 2025, everybody!

Fruitcake Exchange

You'll think I'm crazy, but I've just finished my 8th batch of fruitcakes a couple of days ago.

 

Each batch has 9 mini loaves. So yes, that's already 72 loaves. 😂 I'll be making my 9th and final batch in another couple of days. I've given away 41 of them so far. And yes, Art has been eating some of it. He'll have enough for many months stored in the freezer once I'm done.

Which brings me to a happy thing that happened recently.

We go walking every evening after dinner for about a half hour. We pass many of the same houses. One evening several months ago, we met Alex who happened to be from the Big Island just like Art and they're the same age too. He'd joke with us every time we passed their house. 

Eventually, we also met his wife, Charlotte who is also as friendly and cheerful as her husband. I told them once that we were late for our walk because I was busy making fruitcake. They laughed when I told them how many I'd made.

Then one evening, I asked them if they liked fruitcake and would they like to try one of mine since I was making another batch in a couple of days. Alex laughed and said yes.

We brought a loaf over but Charlotte had a surprise for us. She said, "You like to bake, I like to sew and quilt." She explained that this was a bag to use for carry-out containers. I was absolutely amazed.

The following evening, they told me how much they enjoyed the fruitcake. 

I told them that mom used to sew for other people many, many moons ago and was totally impressed with Charlotte's craftsmanship. Mom said I needed to give them another fruitcake.

So I did. 😄

How to Kill a Bleeding Heart

Mom has always raked up the leaves from roadway trees that fell on our property. She's also loved being able to take care of the garden. Perhaps we didn't quite agree with everything she did in the garden, but since it made her happy, we just let her take care of it all. However, in the last several months, her many falls and trips to the ER made us see that it was no longer something we could let her do. Instead, she is LOVING, absolutely LOVING going to what she calls her "Senior Club" every weekday.

So now it was our job to care for the garden. 

I guess mom has just been pulling or cutting off these sprouts that stubbornly makes its way out of our gravel in the back. After much frustration from pulling out the weeds, yanking at its long roots and STILL having them pop out here and there, we looked over into all our neighbors' yards to see if they had this vine in their yard.

Since we live on a hill, you can see that our neighbor's yard in back is actually about 4 feet above ours. We saw that they had the SAME plant. 

And then we saw it peeping out of our neighbor's fence (on the left of us) with a lot of flowers. We NEEDED the flowers to determine what kind of plant it was.  I took a photo of it and looked online to see what it was. 

Bleeding Heart Vine! Our neighbor in back came out when she saw us and told us that they've been trying to get rid of that vine for at least 16 years or more. 😳 Well the roots had traveled 4 feet underground into our property. 

So what to do?!?

Much as we hate using poison, we read that you needed to use RoundUp. Art covered some of the gravel so the poison wouldn't contaminate it and then proceeded to spray the leaves and roots.

And then we waited. It took two days before it showed real killing power.

We started checking every morning and evening. Art even zapped that tall stubborn vine twice and it's still showing a lot of green. Sigh...

Fingers crossed that eventually, it will give up. What are the chances? Then again... have those roots traveled even farther just waiting to pop up when we're not looking?

POSTSCRIPT:

Day 6: That one plant is still showing green. Now that it’s trying so hard to live, Art is feeling sorry for it. 😑

Inside an Egg

I was preparing the batter for my 6th batch of fruitcake which called for 4 eggs. The first egg I cracked open happened in the normal way. But the 2nd egg still had that eggshell membrane intact and the egg contents didn't flow into my bowl. So then I wondered how much of the egg shell I could safely take off without it exploding on me... just to see.

Isn't it amazing? Now that I think about it, I should have seen how much more of the eggshell I could have taken off. Darn! Art was the one who insisted on taking this photo for fun.

Have you ever had this happen to you?

Pyrex Made In China

I posted my experience with a Pyrex measuring cup I bought at Longs CVS a couple of years ago. I'd discovered that the 1 cup measuring cup just wasn't pouring like my other Pyrex measuring cup that I'd had for over 10+ years. That's when I saw it was made in China.

And now I'm noticing that the print on the cup made in China are also flaking off. I'm wondering how long before that cup won't be usable to measure liquids. 

Do you see the spout difference? The one made in China is on the left. You can see why it wouldn't pour like the one made in the US.

The one made in the U.S. also says CORNING.

And interestingly, here's something else I found. The measuring cups made in the U.S. have markings on the bottom. The one made in China does not. 

I'll have to check carefully next time I buy any Pyrex to make sure it's made in the U.S.

POSTSCRIPT: 

Oh no! I bought a couple of Anchor Hocking glass pitchers last week and would you believe, they ALSO don’t pour well. It dribbles, drips in different directions. Arrrghhh!

Toto Toilet Trauma

OK, you don't have to imagine this...

But there I was sitting on the toilet at 4:00 in the morning. After I did my business, I pressed the button on the remote control to start the bidet.

It started up just fine. We've had this Toto bidet for many years and it never gave us any trouble. (Oops! I just noticed I labeled the remote control wrong. It should have been Toto Remote Control.)

BUT, then when I tried to STOP it, ALL the lights on the remote control started blinking madly! 

Acccck! I pressed the STOP again. Nope. The lights kept blinking and the water kept shooting up to my nether regions. Aggghhhh! I pressed all the buttons and then the STOP button. Nope. Still kept shooting water. 😲

So then I thought... maybe if I stood up, it would stop shooting. Nope. It just shot up my back.

Arrrghhh... 😖

I had to call Art. I called out softly. No answer. I called a little more loudly. No answer.

"Arrrrrtttt!" I yelled.

I heard a sleepy, "Oh no... Are you getting vertigo?" And then he came rushing into the bathroom. 

I told him the problem knowing my nether regions were now the cleanest it has been in a gazillion years.

He calmly turned off the electrical outlet by pressing the black TEST button. 

I was envisioning having to go and buy another bidet for the toilet which was not going to be fun. 

However, he just changed the battery on the remote control later in the morning and pressed the red RESET button and it works fine now. 😏

It really helps to have an electrical engineer in the house. 😄

Happy New Year, Everybody!

Happy New Year, everybody! Or as we say in Hawaii, "Hauoli Makahiki Hou!" 

And yes, of course we stayed up to see the fireworks. It's impossible not to stay up for it because it's so noisy. This is looking out our window with a long lens. I would guess 99.9% of the fireworks going off on the island is illegal. 

Ah well... It does start off the year with a flash and bang!

So resolutions. Did you write any or think of any? 

I guess one of my resolutions is to continue working to make mom's life as pleasant as can be and to be patient when things become even more challenging.

What else?

Hmmm...

I guess it's to just try to relax more and let things be.

I will... as soon as I get my last batch of fruitcakes done. 😂

Oh, and get those New Year newsletters/emails out before it's 2026. Then I need to organize my office, get the lemon tree pruned...

Oh... relax? OK... will do.

POSTSCRIPT 1:

I saw this in the Star Advertiser just before the New Year.

Unfortunately, the powers that be are not able to curb the use of illegal fireworks. There are very sad accidents happening every New Year involving those illegal fireworks. The most tragic are those involving children. 

What I hate MOST of all are what my nephew calls the concussion bombs that set off car alarms and startles everybody in a two block area. 

Whatever the case... on we go to the more peaceful adventures of 2025!

POSTSCRIPT 2:

The fireworks last night on Oahu was the worst we've seen in the last 16 years that we've lived here since we moved back from Illinois. (This was right outside our bedroom window.) 

We went for an early morning walk and talked to other neighbors who were really surprised at how bad it was last night. These aerial fireworks are illegal and yet we have so many that the smoke after midnight made it hard to see. It's a good thing there was some rain earlier so no fires were started. We're also lucky that the tradewinds blew out the smoke by morning.

But...

The latest I've heard is that these people were making homemade fireworks which just exploded. Four people died and 20 others, many critically injured were taken to different hospital trauma units.

It's insane. Illegal fireworks are very expensive. I guess this is proof the economy was doing well since so many people had money to burn. 

Sigh...