"Christmas Star"

We and many of our friends have been fascinated with the idea of the "Christmas Star" that happened last night on the Winter Solstice. It's not really one star but two planets, Jupiter and Saturn. Apparently they've not been so close together at night for 800 years in 1226. 

Well, just the idea that it's been 800 years was motivation enough to get us to pay attention.

Our friends out in Mililani sent our text group of friends this photo.

We loved seeing the silhouettes of the palm and papaya trees in the foreground.

Art got our tripod ready, dusted off my Canon camera, zoomed the lens and we got this shot. Doesn't Saturn look reddish? It's farther away from the Earth. Not quite as interesting without a foreground though.

And then we got this photo from our friend who has a friend on the Big Island who was at the crater of Halemaumau. Kilauea was erupting yesterday.

I texted our friend Dave, the master photographer and he sent this photo saying it was his contribution. 

I thought he meant those two stars on the right hand corner.

But no, he was just joking. That's an illustration of Jupiter with Saturn in the back of it. 

Were you able to see the planets? They'll be there tonight, but you'll have to check what time is best in your area. Good luck! 

Mom's Glasses Problem

I wear reading glasses. I do have a separate pair of glasses for distance, but generally don't use it since the doctor says I can do without them. Art wears glasses all the time and has no problem with them.

Last year, mom's prescription changed so we took her to Sam's Club to get new glasses. We had such a huge problem fitting them. We'd take her in and they'd adjust it. She'd say they fit well and we'd go home. The next day, she'd complain that they don't stay on her nose and keeps slipping down. So we'd take her back in and the same thing would happen. 

After the third time of going to Sam's and still having her glasses slip down, I remembered my granddaughter using these holders when she went to the dance studio.

I bought them on Amazon and put them on her glasses. They were OK for a day, but then she said it was too tight.

Eventually, she would interchange her glasses with the old prescription pair half the time but she said things were blurry.

And then one day, mom said her glasses BROKE! 

Art examined them and said the screw had rusted, snapped and were embedded in the screw holes. It couldn't be removed.

I'd never heard of this happening.

I called Sam's Club and the optician checked the files and said the warranty was only for 1 year and it was 1 month past. 

Seriously?

Sigh.

However, she took pity on me and said I could bring the glasses in without mom and she would see what she could do to repair it.

When I brought mom's glasses in, the optician said she could see the rust on the inside of the frame as well. I told her that mom is outside in the morning and she does sweat in the sun. The optician said that mom needed to wash her glasses everytime she sweat while wearing them. Art says he always washes his glasses after his runs.

The Optician (I wish I could remember her name) took pity on 91 year old mom and got the identical pair of glasses from the display and transferred the lens from the broken pair to the display pair. 

She then worked hard to match the fit so we could avoid the danger of bringing mom in for the fitting.

Incredibly, they fit! Mom says they stay on her nose just fine!

We haven't heard a single complaint. 

Absolutely amazing! 

I'd asked the optician where I could write a review for her wonderful work and she gave me an email that I could write to.

And yes, I wrote a glowing, grateful review as soon as I got home.

What a relief!

Two Projects in One Day! (Part 2)

Art's big joke about all his home maintenance projects is that it always takes 3 times longer than he thought it would. Sometimes even 5 times longer. He just doesn't like to give up.

OK, now that he'd gotten the part he needed in the morning, he  decided to start on the leaky faucet project right away. That was a surprise. I thought he'd wait for the next day to get an earlier start. 

I was upstairs thinking it was going to take all day.

But no... He was done in maybe an hour. That's the broken cartridge he needed to replace in the middle photo. He put a piece of newsprint by the handle to make sure he'd fixed the leak. 

Buoyed by the success of the faucet project, he started on the screen project. And it wasn't even lunch time yet! This was totally amazing.

You can see where he'd just duct taped the screen frames together, but it caused a space where mosquitoes could come through. Granted, I haven't had a mosquito problem in a while. This is weird. I wonder if the clouds of gazillion finches we have in the islands now eat mosquitoes. 

Uh oh... going off on a tangent again.

Anyway, Art laid out all his supplies to put the screens together.

And went straight to work.

Yes, it's true we had to delay dinner by a few minutes, but he finished!

This has got to be a record.

So what else could I ask him to do?

Trip to Home Depot at an Ungodly Hour (Part 1)

Maybe it's just because the year is ending that Art decided to take care of our leaking faucet in the kitchen and the deteriorating window screens as well.

I guess we'd just been avoiding going out to the hardware store.

Well, Art really did need to get that faucet fixed. There was no question on that.

Going to Home Depot required some planning. The store is always crowded with contractors or people like us fixing breaking parts of our homes. 

We first checked the operating hours. They open at 5 AM! Seriously! We also checked the people traffic at the stores.

So yes, we got up EARLY and headed out the door. The store was empty at 5 AM.

They had hand sanitizers, wipes to disinfect the cart and even masks. We had our own so no need to use theirs.

We found the parts needed to build screens and parts to fix the faucet leak.

I asked Art what other people did to fix their screens. They all deteriorate with Hawaii's salt air and are not warrantied.

He said, "Oh, the store will build screens for you or you can hire a contractor to do it."

"Uuum... really? Then why don't we have these professionals at the store do it for us?" I asked.

"Where's the fun in that?" he answered.

🙄

As we were leaving the store I saw the Christmas tree they had set up filled with gift cards and small tools.

POSTSCRIPT:

Granted, the faucet cartridge he needed did not fit and Home Depot didn't have the correct one so that did necessitate a trip back to return it and we had to go to City Mill to get the correct part. Luckily, the stores were still not very crowded.

Washer Cover Experiment

Our washer and dryer has to stay on our patio. No, it's can't be enclosed. There's not enough space. Therefore, we have a problem with rust. The Hawaiian air is humid and salty.

Our wonderful friends gave us a couple of these lightweight washer covers, but unfortunately the first one broke within a few months.

I wrote a post about my hopeful idea of polyurethaning the cover to make it more durable. I used up half the can.

Alas! It lasted only 7 months, just a few months longer than the unvarnished one.

The polyurethane just made the material more brittle and in a short time, just crackled apart.

We'd bought a stronger water resistant cover for our dryer from Home Depot a couple of years ago and that has stood the test of time.

However, it's hard to take off and on in that tight space (also something we're not able to fix).

Luckily we usually (almost always) hang our clothes outside to dry.

I looked online and found this water resistant/proof (?) cover. It has a zipper than runs from the top or the bottom so you don't have to take the cover off. 

I looked at the reviews and a few people said the zipper is terrible and can break after 8 months. Other people really liked it. Granted, almost nobody writes reviews a year later so we don't know exactly how good it is.

We shall see.

Lazy Shortcut for Grated Ginger

I'm very lazy in the kitchen. 

My family loves to eat chilled tofu with a sauce of grated ginger and shoyu (soy sauce). Unfortunately, I somehow keep forgetting to grate that ginger root.

One day I had this idea to just spend time grating a bunch of ginger root and freezing it. I looked online to see if it was OK to freeze ginger. Someone recommended putting small mounds of grated ginger on waxed or parchment paper and freezing it.

I did it and then stored the little grated ginger lumps in a jar. Oh happy day! 

Now... all I have to do is take out a lump of frozen grated ginger, add it to shoyu, swirl it around and drizzle it over the tofu squares.

Perfect! 

And if I want to make it even more interesting, I can add some frozen green onions too.

I told you I was lazy.

Christmas?

This isn't a normal holiday season. We didn't get to have family over for Thanksgiving and we're usually visiting our children in Maryland and Illinois around now. Last year we were visiting our son and his family and took a trip to Washington, D.C. to see the Ice Maze at City Center.

Our grandsons loved it. And I have to say it's the first ice maze I've ever walked in.

We then stopped in Illinois for a few days before heading home to Hawaii. 

Missing my children and their spouses, grandchildren and friends who we loved visiting on the mainland and being stuck at home here in Hawaii didn't produce a lot of holiday spirit.

However, our daughter insisted we should put up the tree and carry on.

So we did.

And a funny thing happened.

It actually worked as the memories each ornament invoked nudged our spirits upwards.

Even when mom walks by and looks at the decorations she can't help but smile. I am noticing that there's a lot more Christmas lights as we walk by before the sun comes up in the morning. I have a feeling that everybody is looking for some holiday cheer at this critical time of year.

Cruising on a Princess

 I saw this on Cathy@Still Waters' blog a while ago and it made me laugh.

I have to laugh because I have several of those bags.

We got them last year (seems like a lifetime ago) when we took mom for her final trip to Japan to see her relatives and cruise around the country in April.

We were on the Diamond Princess and had a wonderful time. It was a huge surprise to discover that it was the SAME ship we traveled on when we took the Alaskan Cruise with mom and Auntie Grace in August, 2011. 

One thing that did bother me happened on the day of our disembarkation in Yokohama.

Since it was mom's last big trip, we'd paid a bit more for a larger room and a few other amenities. One of them was to wait in a comfortable location to wait for our turn to leave the ship. There were tables set up with pastries and other snacks along with beverages. 

As we waited our turn to pick up something to eat, I saw an elderly gentleman looking over the bakery selections and cough over them several times.

I took mom's arm and told her we should sit elsewhere and forget picking up anything to eat. I didn't want to take the chance of her getting sick.

One year later, we were surprised to hear that it was the same Diamond Princess where passengers were unable to disembark because of the COVID-19 infections aboard ship.

That was truly a close call. It could have been us. 

Wow!

And Now the Washing Machine Gets Sick!

We do the laundry perhaps every 2-3 days. We do just one load of laundry which gets hung on our clothes line. Mom would do a small load of wash everyday if we let her. However we've convinced her to wait until we have a full load before starting up the washer. 

Well, after 14 years, the washer suddenly stopped spinning and making a horrible grumbling sound. I was not looking forward to hunting for another appliance during a pandemic, but started thinking about looking online to see what I could find.

Art? Nope. He was looking online at YouTubes to see how he might be able to repair it.

"Should be do-able," he said.

He pushed the washing machine backwards and pulled out the part that was indeed broken as instructed on the YouTube video.

He then looked online and found that it was a $2.75 (on the mainland) washer motor coupler. However, if he ordered it to be sent to Hawaii, it would cost $17 for shipping. Seriously?

I was skeptical about this repair work on a 14 year old machine but we have a friend who happens to be a plumber. He told Art that he could find the part at the Reliable Parts store in Mililani where it cost $23. Sigh...

This is what the guts of a washing machine looks like from the bottom looking up.

That motor is extremely heavy. 

Do you see those two clips (below) that hold the motor together after you replace the coupler?

I want you to picture this.

You have to hold up that motor while the other person pushes that clip in place. The YouTuber is somehow able to snap it in place easily. 

I had to lie down in front of Art and hold up that motor while he tried to snap the clip in place.

It would not snap. It's very strong.

Meanwhile I'm almost nauseous in front of him trying to hold that motor up.

Despondent, we gave up.

Well, I gave up. 

We took a break and had lunch. Meanwhile, Art's mind is whirring along.

He decided that drastic measures were called for. He called me out again and we removed the outer covering so the intestines of the machine were more exposed and we would be at a better angle.

This time, he was able to snap the clips in place, get the motor back up again and push the washing machine in place.

We went to bed early that night. There were a few aches and pains, but we recovered OK.

I hope no other machine gets sick while this pandemic is going on.

OH... I forgot to tell you that the machine now does work!

Masks for My Grandkids

I first started madly making masks in March. Madly! But I didn't have as many supplies as I needed. I scrounged everywhere including mom's sewing chest for elastic. I didn't have enough thread at first, but combined with mom's eventually had quite a bit until I found that many were polyester which would melt if someone tried to iron their mask. Friends gave me their cotton aloha shirts or 100% cotton bed sheets to cut up. My daughter sent me some of her cotton fabrics. I was at my sewing machine daily morning to night for a couple of months and ended up sewing about 200 masks. 

And then I was done.

But I had the last remnants left and asked my son if my grandsons could use more masks. 

He said, "Sure, they could always use extra masks."

So I made these.

After making so many masks, I've learned little tricks to make it go faster like not cutting the threads between masks. 

My daughter also sent me these "wonder clips" to use instead of pins.

I also made some ladybug masks for them.

Our son said the 3D style instead of Olson was better for the boys because they're easier to breathe. 

Unfortunately I made them a bit big. (Will they grow into them?)

Darn!

I kind of thought I was done with masks, but then my friend, Terry gave me more pretty fabric.

And somehow it made me want to get even more fabric. So we ventured out to Fabric Mart. Have I lost my mind? I don't need more fabric. I don't need to make more masks. Everybody can get masks pretty cheaply now. But the fabrics were so cute. 

Oh what the heck! I think my neighbors could use more masks for the holidays. And now I have some cute fabrics for my granddaughter and grandsons. 

And then there's all these supplies that my daughter sent me. 

Ah well...

 

Have I gotten addicted to revising patterns and making masks?

Could be...

Scary Day

Mom is 91 and she's been in good health. Well, except for the matter of a blood pressure that needs to be kept under control. She likes keeping to her schedule. She is having breakfast every morning around 5:00 (sometimes earlier), does 20 minutes on the treadmill and then watches her news from Japan. Once that's over and she knows what's going on with American politics from the Japanese point of view she heads out the door to water all her plants and rake up leaves from the sidewalk and street. She's also trimming back all the ground cover next to the sidewalk. Everything is kept neat and tidy.

Lunch is at 11:00 on the dot. She tends to have lunch on her own since it's too early for us unless we bring in take-out. Then there's the nap at around 12:30. Dinner is at 5:00 on the dot. 

If she doesn't follow this schedule, our mom-radar is pinging.

This past Friday, Art saw her coming in early from her watering while he was reading the morning newspaper. She told him she was unsteady on her feet. He called me immediately since their communication is often ...rather... interesting since he hasn't been able to pick up enough mastery of Japanese and mom has never gotten the hang of English. (Though I think she knows more than she lets on.)

Mom told me that she wasn't dizzy. She didn't have a headache. There was no numbness anywhere. Her face wasn't droopy and she was perfectly lucid. However, she felt she couldn't balance properly to walk and was afraid of falling.

This alarmed both Art and me. I sent off an email to her doctor and didn't hear back right away. Meanwhile mom took a two hour morning nap which she never does. Art and I worriedly paced around the room. We checked on her constantly to make sure she was breathing properly and she seemed fine.

We decided to go and pick up a quick take-out lunch so she'd have something to enjoy. When we got home, mom was just getting up and thoroughly enjoyed the lunch treat. Her appetite was definitely not diminished. We told her to use the cane when she walks around the house.

Mom said she has not been able to get a good night's sleep lately and keeps getting up around four times to use the bathroom and has difficulty getting back to sleep.

OK, so now she went back on schedule and took her after-lunch nap. That was surprising after that long morning nap. After almost an hour and a half went by and she was still napping, I decided to call the Kaiser Advice Nurse. I told her that mom's doctor had not emailed me back. She said mom's doctor was not in today and assigned another doctor to call me back.

By the time that doctor called me, mom had gotten up and her balance was restored. I had mom walk around the carpeted family room and she was astonished that her balance had been restored. The doctor advised me to keep mom off the treadmill for a time and gave permission to give her 5 mg. of melatonin each evening.

Mom got up the following morning in great spirits. She said the melatonin did wonders and she only woke up twice but could go right back to sleep. 

What a relief! Art and I were on edge all day. I don't think our mental health can take a lot more of all this stress.

And mom? She's cheerful as ever.

Did Alexander Fleming Really and Truly Save Winston Churchill with Penicillin?

Art recently got this Forwarded message and passed it on to me to enjoy. It sounded a bit too good to be true. I looked it up on Snopes and found that indeed it's not true. It's a myth.

I then checked Wikipedia for Fleming and found further information on just how untrue it was. 

Here's that Forwarded message Art got.

"Irish Luck - Remember to send it back!

His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog.

There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death

The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved.

'I want to repay you,' said the nobleman. 'You saved my son's life.'

'No, I can't accept payment for what I did,' the Scottish farmer replied waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel.

'Is that your son?' the nobleman asked.
'Yes,' the farmer replied proudly.

'I'll make you a deal. Let me provide him with the level of education my own son will enjoy. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll no doubt grow to be a man we both will be proud of.' And that he did.

Farmer Fleming's son attended the very best schools and in time, graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin.

Years afterward, the same nobleman's son who was saved from the bog was stricken with pneumonia.

What saved his life this time? Penicillin.

The name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill .. His son's name?

Sir Winston Churchill.

Someone once said: What goes around comes around."

You know what else is funny? He wasn't Irish. Alexander Fleming was Scottish.

I know I'm picky. I really do like to check these Forwarded emails and let people know if it's fake. I've been told I should "lighten up." However, I guess I don't like the idea of misinformation being sown and grown as fact. 

Ever since my son sent me a book called Lies My Teacher Told Me, I've tried to be extra careful to not teach or spread misinformation.

This is what I got from Snopes about this story:

"...Alexander Fleming did not leave the farm to rush off to medical school to become the doctor he had supposedly always longed to be. In fact, young Alec (as he was then known) departed for London when he was 14, where his older brother Tom had studied medicine and opened a practice. Alec attended the Polytechnic School in Regent Street; after graduating, he entered the business world at the urging of his brother, worked as a clerk for a shipping firm for a few years, then joined a Scottish regiment when the Boer War broke out. It was not until after all of this that Alec decided to try his hand at medical school, and even then it was the encouragement of his older brother that was the deciding factor, not a lifelong yearning on Alec’s part to become a doctor. Additionally, Alec’s medical school education was financed with a £250 inheritance from a recently-deceased uncle, not an endowment from a grateful Randolph Churchill.

Nor is the other end of this tale true. Winston Churchill did come down with a sore throat and a high fever while in Tunis (on the way home from his December 1943 meeting with Franklin Roosevelt and Josef Stalin in Tehran), and the diagnosis of the medical team called in from Cairo by his personal physician (Charles Wilson, later Lord Moran) was pneumonia. According to Wilson’s biography, Churchill was treated with sulphonamide (an antimicrobial, but one unrelated to penicillin) and digitalis (for his heart) and sent to bed to rest. By the time a specialist, Professor John Scadding, was flown in from London, Churchill was already well on his way to recovery. In short, Alexander Fleming was neither present nor consulted when Churchill was diagnosed with pneumonia, nor was penicillin used to treat the British prime minister...

According to the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, Churchill publicly denied the Fleming story in 1946."

Therefore, before you send anything out, please check Snopes.

OK, OK... I'll get off my soapbox now.

Thriftbooks

I have a collection of books I accumulated through the years from garage, library, rummage sales etc. which I used for my first graders while I was teaching. I sold or donated most of them before our move to Hawaii but kept three shelves worth to enjoy with my future grandchildren.

During this time of COVID-19, I started sending some of the books to Maryland for my grandsons. My granddaughter is much too old for these 1st grade books. Good grief! She'll be in high school soon. Yikes! 

The older of my grandsons has entered online kindergarten and is already reading. I'm so proud of him. When he received the books I sent by Leonora and Arthur Hornblow, he was captivated by them. On one Facetime he asked, "Grandma, could you send me more Strangest Things books?"

I had given him and his little brother four of them but didn't have the Reptiles do the Strangest Things or Animals do the Strangest Things. I checked Amazon and at the time the cost was about $19 for a book. I see now that the prices have gone down. 

Anyway, I started doing more research and checked the reviews for a company called Thriftbooks.com.

The company seemed reputable and I figured $10 for two books wouldn't break the bank. So I ordered the books to be sent to Maryland. When I told my grandson he was thrilled, but could hardly wait for them to arrive. 

The website said the Reptiles book ($5.09) would be in Acceptable condition and the Animals book ($4.19) would be in Good condition. You can see from the above that prices and conditions change each day. Darn! I would have waited if I knew there would be books in VERY GOOD condition.

The books arrived in Maryland in less than a week and I asked my son to send me a photo. 

Darn! I could see that the binding on the Animals do the Strangest Things was in very bad condition. It was disappointing because that's the one that was supposed to be in Good condition.

Soooo....

I emailed a complaint letter and sent them the photo.

Within an hour, I got this message.

I was really impressed. 

I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that the replacement will be in much better condition.

That afternoon, our son sent us a photo of the boys looking at the books and they seemed mesmerized by all they were learning. They didn't care that the binding was coming apart on the Animals book. 

Ah well... their grandma is very happy.

POSTSCRIPT:

The replacement book arrived a week later in Maryland and our son sent this photo.

My son says it's in much newer condition.

I'm very, very happy!

Mom's Orchids

Mom has been staring at her budless orchid plants for a while and thinking they are just too much work to keep up.

"They have to be transplanted," she sighed. "It's too hard for me to do anymore. The fertilizer is too expensive. And I would need more fern fiber...."

"Sure," I said. "You should just give them away." I was rather relieved.

The orchids must have heard that she would be giving up on them.

All of a sudden, one day, they decided to show their colors.

You can see new spikes shooting out of those dormant plants.

"Could you get me more orchid fertilizer and fern (Hapuu, Hawaiian tree fern) fiber?" Mom asked.

Sigh...

"And can you help me repot them?" she asked Art.

Notice she didn't ask my brown thumb. She knows me better.

Fun with Fossils

 Art had recorded a PBS series called Prehistoric Road Trip.

It brought back memories of his interest in rock and fossil collecting. Art does have this propensity for collecting things. As a child he collected stamps and coins.

When we moved to Hawaii from Illinois, I did pack the fossils and rocks he collected in a box. He used to enjoy picking up a small rock whenever we ventured out of Illinois. He would then note on the rock where he picked it up and when. This necessitated finding a rock with a flat surface. 

Art likes to collect things. I want them organized.

Therefore I knew where those rocks and fossils were and could dig it out for him to once more enjoy.

Unfortunately, they were just stuffed in the boxes before our move without much care.

I took charge of his rocks and Art was in charge of noting where each fossil came from. 

Unfortunately, unlike the rocks, the fossils had not been labeled properly because I'm sure he assumed he'd never forget where they came from.

And surprisingly, he did remember.

These shell fossils came from the Thornton Quarry located in the southern edge of metropolitan Chicago.

Good grief!

I was 8 months pregnant at the time laboring under the hot sun looking for fossils with Art, our daughter and some good friends.

We didn't find much, but I do remember it was fun. We went blueberry picking after that. 

I was young and had more energy than I do now.

Another adventure we had was our trip to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Canada where we stopped at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs (UNESCO World Heritage Site) Visitors Center before going to the cliffs. We had a lovely chat with the Rock Museum proprietor at the Center. (Believe it or not, Art looked through my Travel Journal and found all the notes I jotted down about that day.) 

As we were leaving the shop, the very kind and generous owner gave me this 300 million year old (Carboniferous) fossil root that had been found at the cliffs. Art insisted on paying for it but she would not take his money. I love Canadians. No, seriously... We love Canadians.

And no, we didn't find any other fossils on that very rainy day.

These fish fossils are from the American Fossil at Kemmerer, Wyoming.

This is from their website:

"American Fossil is giving you the opportunity of a lifetime. We have the only quarry in the world where you have the opportunity to dig fossils and keep every fossil you find. We have recently acquired the South Dempsey Quarry, in the Green River Formation..."on

Art's sister and brother-in-law had gone there and paid the $59 a person price for the opportunity to dig their own fossils and then sent these two to us. We were very impressed.

While Art was busy with his fossils, I labeled where he got each rock and put them in individual mini bags.

There are teeny rocks from Turkey, Italy, Canada, U.S. Japan, South Korea, Portugal, Tanzania, Kenya, Greece, etc. and a special rose rock from Kansas that a certain wonderful blogger friend sent me.

And much as I was not into collecting little pebbles on our trips, every time I held one, I remembered the adventure it contained.

I hope that someday soon we'll be able to have more adventures again. 

I think that's enough of rock collecting though.

Well, that's what I think anyway.