iPad Holder for ZOOMing

I wrote a blog post a while ago about the lengths I went through to make an iPad holder for our ZOOM calls with the kids/grandkids.

I used an old shoe box and made this cardboard holder which worked pretty well. 

I'd looked online and saw adequate iPad holders on Amazon for $10- $20. Then there were those that were much, much, much more expensive. 

My cardboard iPad holder is not adjustable, but it was more of less OK and I was more or less satisfied.

A couple of months later, my daughter said she was surprised to find an iPad holder at an Asian discount store called Hello Tokyo in Niles, Illinois that she rarely goes to but had to stop by to see what they had on the way home from some distant outing. Everything at that store is $2. 

We have one of those discount stores in Hawaii called Daiso. Almost everything in the store is $1.50 and you can't help but buy something you might never use when you go there. Whenever local people go on tours to Japan, they would invariably stop at all the Daisos they can find in what seems like every city. There's also Seria and a number of others that I can't remember the name of. 

Well... anyway, I was really envious of Tiffany's adjustable iPad stand. Just to show you what a wonderful daughter I have, this is what we found in the next flat rate box she sent us. 

And guess what. It works perfectly! 

This might make me want to take a trip to our Daiso store here in Hawaii.

PJ Problem

Art doesn't buy clothing much at all. He's had a hard time finding PJs that he likes to wear in Hawaii. I've bought him several when I've been lucky to spot them on Amazon. However, he tends to wear them until they're virtually falling off of him. 🙄

His latest favorite is really in great condition EXCEPT for the waist band elastic.

Yes, Art is very slim. I'm being kind. He's actually skinny. Unlike me his weight is not lodged at his tummy. Yes, I'm jealous.

Anyway, the waistband elastic of this PJ is totally (and I mean TOTALLY) stretched out. I didn't take a photo of the stretched out elastic so I had to hunt through his drawer to find something similar.

Those pajama bottoms don't have a casing. If it did, I could have just replaced the elastic.

Like the underwear at the bottom, it has the thin elastic sewn on which deteriorates and stretches out pretty easily.

I asked Art how he's able to hold the pants up and he said he tucks it into his underwear band. 

"Why don't you just give up and toss the PJ?" I asked.

"Because the top is still great," he answered. "And it's otherwise in great condition."

What can I do? Hmmm.... Maybe I can sew on an elastic casing right over the worn elastic?

It WASN'T easy and took way longer than I thought it would.

I had him try it on before I put in the final stitches.

"Too loose," he said. "Maybe 1/2 inch tighter."

2nd fitting: 

"Still too loose... Could you make it 1/2 inch tighter?"

3rd fitting:

"Uuuummm.... Sorry... Could you make it another 1/2 inch tighter?"

I made it 1 inch tighter or was it more?

"Perfect!" he said.

It's so annoying to know how much smaller his waist is than mine. 😆

Ah well... It's done. He's happy and now he doesn't have to worry about his pants falling down.

Racism in the Virginia Police Department

 Did you see this in the news?

This was in the New York Times:

"Caron Nazario, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, was driving to Petersburg, Va., from a drill weekend the night of Dec. 5 when he saw police lights flashing behind him.

Too nervous to stop on a darkened road, Lieutenant Nazario, who is Black and Latino, drove about a mile to a gas station, pulled over and placed his cellphone on his dashboard, according to a lawsuit and video footage of the encounter."

No, he wasn't killed. But he was pepper sprayed point blank, kicked, forced on the ground and handcuffed despite the fact that he wasn't fighting or being violent.

I watched this on the news this past Friday evening and it flabbergasted me. I know about the problems African Americans keep suffering at the hands of law enforcement, but this really hit me with visceral punch.

This is what is happening in America. This is what has been happening. Yes, racism is thriving.

What we're all learning from this is to be sure you video record whenever you see something happening that is criminal either by criminals or police.

It seems to be almost the only protection you can have and that is frightening.

Perhaps it's hitting me extra hard because I've just heard from a friend traveling to the mainland that her daughter-in-law who lives there is afraid to venture out very much because of the incidences of Asian hate crimes. 

I know they say racial prejudice has always been there... but it really does sound much worse now.

I worry.

Teeny Tiny Eenie Weenie Mosquito?

For quite a while now we've been getting these weird insect bites on the weirdest part of our body. Thigh, tummy, under the chin, under arm. We wondered if we had bed bugs. We checked our sheets carefully, washed them regularly with no sign of insect infestation. 

I started getting these bites first and Art felt sorry for me, but he thought it was something to do with me. Oh ho! But now he's getting them and it's really confounded him.

I then noticed these extremely tiny bugs flying outside my window screens on some mornings. I thought they were too small to be mosquitoes. But when I caught one in our bathroom and took a photo with macro lens, it's looking more like a mosquito.

But how can it be a mosquito? It's too tiny. Is it a gnat?

I learned online that Hawaii has eight species of mosquitoes. Six of them bite humans. Two are active only at night. This is the reason I don't like to hike in the rain forests here unless I have some kind of repellent on me.

I got this following on the Maui Maui website:

"Yes, all of the Hawaiian islands have mosquitoes. They were most likely introduced from bilge water carried in whaling ships in the early 19th century. Aedes aegypti is one of the most common species noted by black and white spots. It is very invasive and found on all the islands."

I've sent a photo by email to the Department of Health since I can't find an email for the Vector Control Branch. We'll see what they say.

If it turns out that the insect I swatted isn't a mosquito or that it's one of the two that don't bite, we'll have to keep hunting for this elusive, aggravating, mysterious bug lurking in some corner of our house.

I can't believe Hawaii has SIX different kinds of biting mosquitoes. One would have been too many, BUT SIX!!! Arrrghhh! 😫

Shower Curtain Dilemma

 Art and I agree on a LOT of things, but sometimes... it takes us forever to see eye to eye.

This brings me to the monumental decision of choosing (you won't believe this) a shower curtain.

I was getting tired of the shower curtain we bought at Walmart in 2013. Our other shower curtain (I think it was plastic) had deteriorated back then. The curtain is right next to the window blowing in a lot of Hawaiian salty air. We looked everywhere for a polyester fabric curtain and couldn't find any.  Therefore, when we saw this at Walmart and we didn't hate it, we agreed it would do.

The thing is... the toilet is right in front of that shower curtain. So when you're sitting there minding your business, you stare at that curtain day in and day out.

Well, my sister-in-law gave me a monetary gift so I decided this might be a time to check out Amazon.

You know... if you don't have much of a choice, it's sometimes easier.

There's a TON of shower curtains on Amazon.

I started out looking at more floral curtains which I thought would work. Here's what Art said:

#1 Too fantasy like

#2 Too red, might stand out too much in a light blue bathroom

#3 Too similar to what we had before those giant pond flowers

#4 Nah

Sigh...

OK, I like forests so I thought it would be pleasant to look at a forest scene.

I liked #1 a lot but when I looked at it more closely, those sunbeams somehow didn't work for me. Still, it would be my choice. Maybe. Art looked at it and said, "It's a deciduous forest. We don't have deciduous forests in Hawaii." 🙄

#2 Meh

So I looked at water color type curtains. #3 might work. Wait. Are those crows? Is that foreboding?

#4 So so, sort of gloomy?

And there we are. #1 is still calling to me though.

Which would you pick?

Celebrating 101 Years!

The day of uncle's 101st Drive-By Birthday Celebration started out very ominously. The party was to be between 11:00-12:30.

This is what I saw at 8:00 in the morning and it did not improve one iota at 9:00. 

Not to worry said Art. "Look at the weather forecast."

"They're wrong 50% of the time," I countered.

"And how often have I been right," he insisted confidently.

"50% of the time," I smirked.

But just to make him happy, I looked at the radar map and this is what it was predicting.

I felt awful for the worry and anxiety my cousins must be feeling after reserving the park for the celebration and all the other preparations they must have made. I knew they had bought plate lunches for everyone who would be driving by.

After not being able to celebrate his 100th birthday last spring with the whole family, I hated to think this celebration would be postponed again.

At 9:15 AM, I saw a rainbow.

Could it be?

"Can I say I told you so?" asked Art.

🙄

At 10:30 Rain started.

Then my brother, nephews and their families started arriving so I passed out the posters and we drove to the park in a caravan.

It was 11:30 and no, the sun didn't come out and the drizzle didn't totally go away, but it was enough.

Uncle was excited and so very happy to see the huge gathering of friends and relatives who came with their best wishes, masked and as distanced as could be. Happily, all vulnerable people were vaccinated so it felt safe. My cousin told me that 19 vehicles showed up with over 50 people waving with happy smiles of love and admiration.

Since the cars were wet, we couldn't tape the posters to the vehicles and had to hold them up for uncle who was thrilled to see mom's Japanese printing. Uncle is a veteran of WWII having served his country as part of the MIS (Military Intelligence Corps) even while his father and eldest brother had been sent away to the mainland with other Japanese Americans and locked in Internment camps.

It was now time to celebrate his 101 years of trials, sadness, happiness, pride and now contentment in a life well lived in the loving embrace of the family who now honored him.

The happy day was also a time we enjoyed seeing so many relatives after a year apart.

And then the rain began.

It didn't matter. We all went home and had the lunches our cousins had given us. 

And we took a nap. When we woke up, the sun was shining high in the clear, blue Hawaiian sky.

Drive By 101st Birthday Celebration Preparation!

My uncle was determined to live to 100. Art has always enjoyed talking to him and whenever we visited, uncle would say, "5 more years!" with a laugh. And then "4 more years," "3 more years,"2 more years!" When he finally got to 100 last spring my cousins planned at first to have his 100th year celebration anyway. 

I felt guilty saying that we weren't comfortable taking mom to a big party with her advanced age during the pandemic. My cousins postponed the party.

This year, my cousins decided to have a drive-by 101st birthday celebration just as many in Hawaii are doing and asked me to get a head/car count. With so many people busy, I offered to make signs for my brother and nephews.

I figured I could just throw some paint on poster boards and attach it to the cars. We went to Walmart and got some poster boards and I thought I was ready.

I dug out my 20 year old acrylic paints. Some had hardened and had to be thrown away. Selection of colors was borderline. I didn't have a good selection of wide bristle brushes. 

I hadn't painted in such a long time.

The little bit of black paint I had was so hard it had to be thrown away.

My brother, Dennis was stopping by Walmart the next day so he offered to pick up some glossy black paint for me.

The small plastic bottles of acrylic paint cost between 50-97 cents.

That's really CHEAP.

I remembered seeing them and was ALMOST tempted to buy some except that I don't paint anymore.

AND... here is something interesting. 

Since I was writing this post, I wanted to make sure the pricing that my brother told me was correct.

Holy smokes! 😲

The Walmart website said $7.99 a bottle!!! I checked my bottle and it was the exact same!

It then occurred to me that MAYBE the walmart.com website might be posting a different price from the local Walmart. 

Sure enough! When I typed in Walmart and my local address, I found the same paint (in the inventory) at the cheaper price although this is the matte version. The gloss version was 97  cents.

BUYER BEWARE!

Mom's eyesight is failing.

One eye is a blur. The other is somewhat OK. We'll be taking her to the ophthalmologist this month.

Art thought it would be a good idea for mom to take part in the poster painting so I measured and  marked where she should write. 

It was extremely difficult for her, not just because of her eyesight, but she hadn't written using a brush in a LONG time.

Still... she did a great job with that bottled acrylic paint which I diluted.

It took me the whole day to finish the paintings. I didn't realize how difficult it would be to paint on a huge board. 

I had a hard time controlling the brush. 

Anyway....

They're done.

But then Art asked, "What if it rains? Or drizzles?" 😳

Aha! I had some water based polyurethane so I coated all the posters with it. 

There! I'm ready for rain, hail, snow. 

"What if it's too windy?" Art asked.

Arrrrghhhhh!

My daughter said when they do drive-bys in Illinois, people park a block away to tape the posters on the car before going to the celebrant's house.

OK... got it!

We bought painter's tape. That way, it won't affect the car's finish. Hopefully.

Then Dennis said he uses RainX Wax and NOTHING will stick to it. 😖

Arrrghhh....

He'll have to hold up the sign as we drive by.

It's forecasted to be VERY windy and maybe rain.

Sigh....

🤞

Rainbow Capital of the WORLD!

Seriously? Hawaii is #1 in the world for rainbows? I'd heard this in the news and found a website called Mint Lounge which explains why.

A lot of it is technical, but suffice to say that Hawaii has clean air due to being far away from everything in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, lots of rain showers and bright sunlight.

After living in Chicago for 35 years, I remember how we used to be so amazed whenever we saw any rainbow. And I think we only saw a handful at best in all the time we lived there.

Here in Hawaii, it's quite commonplace. You see them everywhere right out your car window.

We saw them while practicing tai chi and even saw it reflected ON our car window.

Despite the fact that we see them constantly, we still stand transfixed for a moment every time they decorate our Hawaiian skies.

Gee... it's nice to be #1 in something. And how wonderful to have it be rainbows.

POSTSCRIPT:

You're not going to believe this but April 3rd was National Find a Rainbow Day!

Which just goes to prove that there's day for everything.

Charging Your Cellphone Overnight

We've always liked charging our cellphones overnight at our charging station. It's just a nice feeling to be 100% charged in the morning. 

With a 100% charge I can go the whole day without worrying.

So you can imagine how dismayed I was to see this on Yahoo News.

I found more information on the PC website:

Here are some important points from the website:

"If you leave the smartphone plugged in overnight, it is going to use a bit of energy constantly trickling new juice to the battery every time it falls to 99%. That is eating into your phone's lifespan."

They all say not to put your phone under your pillow at night. The heat build up is very bad for your phone.

Having your phone where it's too hot (car dashboard in the hot Hawaiian sun) or freezing is bad.

"Running a smartphone until it's dead—a full discharge—every time is not the way to go with modern lithium-ion batteries. Don't even let it get that close to 0%. That wears out a lithium-ion battery even faster than normal. Partial discharge is the way to go."

"Plug the phone in before it asks you to enter a low-power mode; iOS will ask you to turn that on when you hit 20% power. Plug it in when the phone is between 30-40%. Phones will get to 80% quickly if you're doing a fast charge. Pull the plug at 80-90%, as going to full 100% when using a high-voltage charger can put some strain on the battery. Keep the phone battery charge between 30-80% to increase its lifespan."

OK... It's a bit more inconvenient, but I'll have to change my iPhone charging habits from now on.

Darn! 😕

Hummmm

I have often teased Art about his snoring. He's been tested for sleep apnea and been diagnosed with such a mild case that it was unnecessary to provide treatment. 

I'm often just jealous that he can fall asleep immediately and pretty much stay asleep. My Fitbit and his Apple Watch records how much sleep we get as well as how good a rest it was and his sleep is far superior to mine.  

But he does snore and sometimes it does bother me enough that I have to gently rouse him so that he can move onto his side.

When I complain mention his snoring, he tells me that I make noises too. In fact, I do at times wake him with my sleep talking. Oh... true... I did once punch him during a nightmare. 

But I don't snore. I don't.

It's true that I've recorded Art's snoring just to prove to him how much he snores. True. True.

Well...

The other night, he used his Apple Watch to record me.

Uuuummm... That was a surprise. I didn't know he could do that. 

I thought I was a truly silent sleeper (unless I'm talking).

As it turns out there appears to be occasions when I hummm. I inhale and gently, melodiously hummm on the exhale. 

But I repeat... I don't snore.

A Favor for Frida

My sister-in-law just texted me that one of her closest, long time friends had asked a favor of her. Her friend's daughter, Lisa is a doctor who had traveled to Thailand and visited an elephant sanctuary. While there, she spotted a very badly injured dog who had flesh and bones on her hind paws worn away and a fracture of her spine causing permanent paralysis. Lisa asked the sanctuary to care for the dog while she got the proper papers to bring the dog back to California.

There was something about this gentle creature that captured Lisa's heart. She named her Frida after Frida Kahlo who said, "Feet, what do I need you for if I have wings to fly?"

After returning to California, wheels were found to support Frida's hind legs. Then they heard about  Wizard of Paws, Derrick Pampana who can create artificial limbs for animals. A motorhome was rented during the pandemic to travel to the East coast where a special prosthesis was made for Frida.

I have to say I was amazed at the effort Lisa put in to provide Frida a happier life. This must be a truly special furry friend.

Lisa has now entered Frida in a contest to choose the 2021 Hero Dog Award.

I got this from the website:

"The American Humane Hero Dog Awards® are an annual, nationwide competition that recognizes the heroes on both ends of the leash. The category finalists will be honored on the nationwide broadcast on Hallmark Channel this fall. Seven courageous canines will be featured, and only one dog will be awarded the 2021 American Hero Dog title."

If you have time and would like to support them, would you vote for Frida before May 6, 2021.

Here is the link to get you to the site to vote for Frida.

https://herodogawards.org/

And this link will take you to the voting page:

https://herodogawards.org/vote/

If you click on Shelter, it will take you to the canine candidates. You would type in Frida which will take you to her information where you can vote for her with your email, name and zip code. 

Thank you in advance. This was just something fun to do, but now I'm keeping my fingers crossed for them. It would be so much fun if they got selected as one of the seven finalists.

And if they won... WOW!

Our First REAL Dine-In!!!

Whenever we take mom to get her fasting blood test done at Kaiser, we take her out to a restaurant for breakfast. It's sort of a celebration for getting it done. 

(Side note: When we were leaving the Kaiser lab, mom was doing her usual fast walk out of the hospital because she didn't want to keep Art waiting. With my ankle still quite tender, I was hobbling behind her. I noticed some people looking up at us and I wondered if they were secretly chuckling that this little ol' lady was walking a lot more briskly than her supposed caretaker.)

We have not gone to an actual dine-in restaurant in a year, but since we're all fully vaccinated, decided to give it a try. 

Mom loves Zippy's wun tun min.  We'd asked her if she wanted a regular breakfast or wun tun min and she laughed. It had been a year and there was really no question what she preferred.

Although we were nervous about going into an actual restaurant, we saw that they had put a number of safety measures in place. Art had to list all his contact tracing information. There was a temperature check and hand sanitizing station.

They told us that servers change their gloves every 20 minutes. Each booth was partitioned with high plexiglass barriers.

They only allow a certain percentage of patrons at a time. Everything that is passed out is disposable. The unused salt, pepper, half & half and sugars are thrown away. We therefore brought them home to use.

The meal was lovely as usual.

Our favorite server, Nora was there. She said they'd all been trained last October on all the COVID safety protocols.

Nora said she knows we hadn't come for at least a year. She remembered that I always order ice tea, but I told her it would be our breakfast so I would have coffee. She laughed to see that mom, however would be having her usual wun tun min instead of a breakfast meal.

I gave Nora a mask I sewed that I always carry to give to my favorite people. Art and I will be seeing our doctor in a couple of days and yes, I'm giving her a mask too.

Just for the fun of it.

Walking Wounded

 Yup. 😖 It happened AGAIN!

The last time I fell in 2018, I was going up the stairs. People can't understand how I could fall going up the stairs, but alas... I'm talented that way. I was holding my cellphone in one hand and I forget what in the other so I suppose I wasn't able to brace myself and fell on my shoulder instead. I guess. And I broke my humerus. 

In 2005 I twisted my ankle while hiking on New Zealand's Bealy Spur Trail and therefore couldn't do the Franz Josef glacier climb with Art two days later.

Then there was China in 2013 due to a missing pavement tile.

I've also been on crutches after another twisted ankle on the Aiea Loop Trail. I forget what year that was.

Sheesh!

It's getting a little annoying.

I've come to the realization that I must have weak ankles... very weak ankles.

Well, this time we had just returned home from going to Costco. I was holding a rotisserie chicken in a box when I missed stepping on the concrete walkway and fell hard on my hip and side which were fine. I was stunned, but the chicken was unharmed.

My Apple Watch immediately began buzzing as I checked to see if the chicken was doing OK.

A message appeared asking if I'd fallen hard.

I remember clicking on "I fell, but I'm OK."

My hand hurt a little, and my big toe too, but I appeared to have come out of it relatively unscathed.

Of course not.

Skin was scraped off my left knee even though it was under my pant leg. I applied aloe and a bandage on it.

And my right ankle.

Yup. 

Hurt like the dickens and I immediately applied ice for the afternoon. I know the drill by now.

And if that wasn't bad enough. That evening, I felt an itch on my left ear lobe.

Puhleeeze! Did I really need this? Wasn't falling bad enough?

There were two insect bites on my ear lobe. Sheesh!

What an annoying day.

Choosing a New Doctor for Mom

Mom's long time doctor at Kaiser retired last December. If you ask me, he looked awfully young to be retiring, but it is what it is. Dr. Y's mother was from Japan and he understood a bit of Japanese so mom was comfortable with him. I always enjoyed talking to him too. He was always too embarrassed to speak any Japanese with mom so I needed to translate constantly even though I think she understands more English than she lets on (I think). I say (I think) because she often misunderstands Art and vice versa. I did ask Dr. Y if he could recommend a doctor who understood or spoke some Japanese for mom. He said he unfortunately didn't know any doctor at Kaiser that could.

Anyway, Kaiser gave us two choices of doctors to switch to. One was an Asian female doctor born in Taiwan and moved to Hawaii when she was 10 years old.

The other doctor was male and Caucasian. 

I conferred with my brother and we agreed that mom would probably be more comfortable with the female, Asian doctor. True... it was rather a biased decision. I sadly confess that. And yes, mom said she’d like a woman doctor too.

However, even though we figured this female doctor wouldn't be able to speak Japanese, she would be more local looking to mom and she was a woman who might understand problems women have more. 

Well...

We got informed that mom's new doctor would be the male Caucasian. That was a surprise. After a year of her not actually seeing a doctor face to face I tried to set up an appointment for mom. 

However, when I called, they said we could only have a phone or video call for now. 

Dr. K called the following afternoon and I put us all on the speakerphone. When I told him I was there to translate, he broke out in some rather surprising Japanese. Totally blew me away. The accent wasn't all that bad either. However, when mom said something in Japanese, he laughed and said it had been a while since he studied it, and wasn't up to speed with the language. 

The funny thing is because he tried to speak the language with mom, she was comfortable to give him some information on her own in broken English. 

I was astonished. He asked about problems and she mentioned an ache in her knee. Turns out he's got a background in musculoskeletal medicine. 

He noticed in the records that we'd asked for the female doctor and he reassured us that he would certainly understand if we'd like to make a change and could help us with that.

Absolutely not. I told him we were sold on having him for mom's new doctor. He told us to take her in for blood tests and then he  put in a request to assign a face-to-face appointment for her.

Awesome.

I'm going to bring him one of my special homemade masks. 😄

WRONG Way to Freeze Something

Last year was the first time I actually saved my turkey bones to make soup stock. The soup was such a success that I started to make soup stock with chicken bones as well and freezing them in jars.

After freezing more soup stock a couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd make some soup yesterday with all the cooler, rainier weather we've been getting.

When I went to get a jar of the frozen soup stock I discovered a line running down the side and bottom of the jar. That was peculiar. I ran my finger along the line and realized it wasn't the frozen soup stock that was cracked. It was the jar. No, I didn't cut myself. Thank goodness!

I couldn't believe it! That had never happened before so I looked online to find out why.

I got the following information from a website called A Better Way to Thrive.

First off, you have to cool your liquid before putting them in jars.

AND you must leave 2-3 inches of headspace BELOW the shoulder of the jar.

Seriously? I had no idea. I figured an inch from the top would do it. Apparently not. 

Use wide mouth jars.

Cap the jars loosely until they are completely frozen. (Uh oh... That's another mistake I made.)

Make sure the jars don't touch each other while freezing. You can even put the jars in socks to make sure they don't touch. (Good grief!)

That's a lot to remember, but I'll sure make a point to be more careful next time I freeze liquid. 

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

I write a blog post for each work day, Monday through Friday. It makes me feel like I still have a schedule and forces my disintegrating brain to work. On top of that, I have some friends and relatives who check my posts with their morning coffee (or so they tell me anyway). Therefore, it's an extra incentive.

Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time coming up with topics to write about, especially since I feel like I've written about everything in the 3,553 posts I've already written.

Well... so here I was during a recent morning walk when I noticed a chicken actually walking perfectly in the sidewalk to cross the street. It reminded me of the times my grandson, JD loved doing jokes beginning with "Why did the _____ cross the street?"

Actually, his latest joke was, "Why did the football team break the piggy bank? Because they wanted to get their quarter back."

Anyway... I digress.

So here I was watching this chicken and thinking I just had to send a photo of this feral fowl crossing the street to JD, but it had already reached the other side.

I had to send Art scrambling to the other side of the street to chase that chicken back onto the crosswalk to get my picture.

Doggone it! It wasn't perfectly right in the crosswalk, but it would have to do because I wasn't going to chase it back to get another photo. Besides, that chicken might wonder about our sanity. 

Hmmm.... now what shall I write about tomorrow? 🤔

Roses are Blue...

A dear family friend surprised us with blue roses a few weeks ago. It was obviously artificially created by having the roses soak up blue dye. The ink used by the florist caused many of the leaves and petals to fall off pretty quickly. 

Art decided to take out three of them to dry in the guest bathroom. Seeing the flowers drying so nicely, I decided to take the whole bunch and dry them as well. Unfortunately, more petals started falling so ...uuuummm... I dropped some Elmers glue at the base of each bloom.

Mom walked into the living room and asked, "How did you get those roses to bloom for so many weeks? And why isn't there water in the vase?"

I told her, "magic." 😁

The Plumbing Saga of the Bathroom Sink

Art's bathroom sink had been leaking slowly for a while. He'd thought of working on it before when he was fixing the leak at the kitchen sink, but that exhausted him so much he decided to wait on his bathroom sink for another time.

The time had come.

He stared at the fixture for a while and then went down to Home Depot to pick up another faucet set. Unfortunately, they no longer made that style so it would be different from my sink but he figured he could just change my faucet fixture also later.

Taking off the cold and hot water handles took all day. They were rusted solid and just wouldn't budge.

I won't go into the terrible lengths we had to go through to get them off.

OK... That was done, but now the spout would NOT come off. Everything was rusted.

That locking nut for the spout was totally rusted to that top plate so the spout couldn't be removed from the sink counter. Art had gone down a second time to Home Depot and bought a basin wrench to try to unscrew that nut. Nope. Didn't work either. 

It was now into the afternoon. Dinner time. Mom likes to eat at 5:00 on the dot so we had to stop and decided to just grab carry-out from Panda Express.

Would you believe that on the way there some giant bird (it had to be gigantic) let loose his bowels on our windshield Unbelievable! 

We figured that was the end to a crappy day.

That evening we texted our problem to our plumber friend who said he could come over to help.

"No..." we said. We can handle this tomorrow.

"Too late," texted his wife. "He's on his way with some tools for you.

Our plumber buddy arrived in 10 minutes with an array of tools and a can of liquid wrench. He also brought papayas from their tree and some homemade kim chee to cheer us up.

More importantly, he gave Art some hints on what to do next. The last resort he said was to use the saw and cut the nut off.

And so our day ended on a high note with our spirits lifted and hopeful. Art used the liquid wrench he gave us to soak the nut and shaft overnight.

The following morning we found that the liquid wrench did not work.

We were now down to that last resort.

Art used a hack saw to painstakingly cut off the stubborn nut.

It took over an hour.

He had turned off the water to work on the sink but when he went to turn the water back on at lunch time he discovered to his horror...

...a horrendous leak at the water heater. We were devastated! Totally bummed! We'd now have to go down to Home Depot and buy a new water heater. Arrrghhh!

I went online and saw that it could be the pressure relief valve. Since he'd had to turn the hot water on and off several times, it must have built up some pressure. Whatever the case, the leak stopped. I have no idea what that all means, but that's what happened.

OK....

So now he's got the entire fixture off and it was time to look at the directions for the new faucet fixture. Could it be the home stretch?

Would you believe....no? The drain stopper would NOT go down flush to the sink bottom. When we compared the old and new stoppers (flange) we discovered that the old flange had a little smaller diameter and therefore could fit in the ceramic sink hole. I felt around that hole and thought I saw and felt a hard metal ring that was the cause of that problem. 

We were feeling pretty depressed and Art had plans to go back to the hardware store for a smaller flange the following day. We gave up and started dinner.

That's when the doorbell rang. It was our plumber buddy. He was checking up on our progress since they were in the area. He told Art that it wasn't metal but a plastic ring to create the mold for the ceramic sink. It can be cut out.

That was hopeful.

Early on the third day of this saga, we discovered that our plumber buddy was totally correct. Good grief! That hard ring could be cut out with an X-ACTO knife.

Oh my gosh! It worked! The flange slid right in and was secured.

As you can see, now our faucets don't match.

Art had considered replacing my faucet so they would match.

He thought about it for 5 seconds and then said, "Let's let sleeping dogs lie."

(Or "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.")

Oh what the heck! Diversity is good.