It Was HUGE!

The other night I was working on Art's family genealogy which is why I'm not able to visit other blogs as often lately. I'm just trying to get done with this massive project. It wasn't supposed to be this big of one, but one thing led to another and I'm totally consumed by it.

Anyway, I digress. It was late. Probably close to midnight. Art was totally asleep. I turned off my computer and headed for our bedroom trying to be very quiet. Just as I was about to go through the doorway, my peripheral vision caught sight of something high up on the wall that shouldn't have been there.

When I looked above my head I saw the biggest darn roach I'd seen in a long time. It must have been over 9 inches long. OK... maybe that's an exaggeration. Did I screech like a wimpy girl? You bet! Probably woke the neighbors. Did I wake Art? Nope.

I furiously started considering my dilemma. Should I try to swat that huge tank of a cockroach on my own? I'd have to use my hiking boot (the one I haven't used on dirt in 3 years). I'd have to listen to the crunch. I might miss. Then it would fly. It might fall on top of me.

I woke Art up.

"You woke me up to kill a roach?????" he mumbled.


Then he saw the roach and said, "Whoa. That is a big one." It was much larger than it looks in the photo. The other photo is blurred probably because my hand was shaking.

He got our fly swatter and smacked it. It fell to the ground.

I screeched again. Sorry, neighbors.

But then it moved! It was still alive. Art put a newspaper on it and smacked it with his slipper to put it out of its misery.

I screeched again. I couldn't help myself. I'm so embarrassed.

Art went to have coffee with his friend, Morris this morning and told him about me and the roach.

Morris told him the roach pales in comparison to the 11 inch centipede that he found on his bed.

Aaaaackkkkk!

Have a peaceful Memorial Day, everyone. However, I'm going to try to wipe this out of my memory.

Mom's Glasses: Problem Solved

Mom had been admiring the transition glasses that Art and I have. She goes in and out of the house and didn't like the little shades that we got her to wear on her glasses.

When we offered to take her to Sam's Club to get new glasses with transition lens, she was all for it. (This is after we priced the cost of glasses around town.)



Here are mom's old glasses.

We went to Sam's Club, met Alex the Super-Optician and chose the largest frames we could find because we knew she wanted large frames that would shield her eyes from harmful cataract causing UVs.

Well it was OK at the store but after wearing the glasses for a few days she just didn't like it. She didn't like the oblong shape. She didn't like the line of the bifocals which caused her to have to move her glasses up and down to watch TV or pull weeds, etc. She just didn't like it and that's that!

Alex read about her plight on my blog and encouraged us to bring her back and fix the problem. We finally got her to agree to it and brought her back.

This time Alex found frames that looked almost exactly like her original ones. We even got a $41.00 refund because these frames were cheaper than the one we chose earlier.

Mom was happy at the store and said the new pair that Alex chose worked better. She said they were even clearer (I'm sure because it's a more current prescription).

Keeping my fingers crossed. I'll bet Alex is too.

POSTSCRIPT: After 5 days, Mom is loving her new glasses and really loves the fact that the transitions give her an instant sunglass effect when she's outside. Phew!

Lahaina Noon

Yesterday, at 12:28 PM we had Lahaina Noon.

This is from the Star Advertiser:
"...Lahaina Noon occurs twice a year in the tropics, and Hawaii is the only state in the union where shadows all but disappear for three to five minutes as the sun burns directly overhead...

...The sun has been making shadows disappear twice a year long before written history. But the phenomenon didn't have a catchy title until the (Honolulu) Bishop Museum sponsored a contest in 1989 that resulted in the term Lahaina ("cruel sun") Noon..."

Just to show you how much I know, I assumed our shadows disappeared at noon everywhere. Hmmm... maybe I shouldn't admit that. Anyway, I decided to go outside a couple of minutes before the appointed time to see for myself.

Sure enough, the center pole for the clothes line did disappear.


Just to show you what a good husband of a blogger Art is, I took a photo of him with his Mt. Fuji walking pole. You get a pole like that before you climb Mt. Fuji and they burn a stamp on it at every station. (Here I am digressing again.)

And here's Art next to a stop sign. Shucks! I should have told him to put his arm down so you could just see a blob of a shadow at his feet. Ah well...

I can do that when this happens again on Oahu on July 16th at 12:37 PM.

Newspaper Tip?

I don't know about the rest of the world, but it seems to me that there are way too many establishments in the U.S. that ask for tips. The shave ice stand has a little can for tips. This is after you pay the $3.00 for ice and flavoring, which I happen to love, by the way. You see these tip cans everywhere. You tip the guy who parks your car, the maid for cleaning your room, the bellhop who brings your bags to your room, the cab driver, etc. If anybody does anything for you, you're more often than not expected to tip. At restaurants now, it's 15 to 20%. You are not supposed to give less than 10% even if you got super crappy service.

It always amazed me that when we were in Japan, you didn't need to tip. It was so refreshing. People must be paid adequately to do their work and that's all they expect. There were several times that Art gave too much for the Japanese cab driver and said to keep the change. The cab driver was so appreciative that it would almost make Art feel like he should have given more.

I always get confused on the amount to tip and got this information on how much you should be tipping everybody.


OK, that's fine. However, the other day we got a bill from our Star Advertiser newspaper. Notice where there's a space for TIP? Yes, it's optional, but really... do you need to tip the newspaper, too? We do give the newspaper carrier a Christmas tip. But now the newspaper company itself wants a tip? How much do they expect?

Sheesh!

Misconduct by U.S. in Internment Cases/BLOGSPOT Comment Trouble

Art brought this article to my attention which really had me shaking my head in exasperation. Not at Art. At the article. It's been said before, but this was just one more proof.

The article by David G. Savage is from the Los Angeles City Times.



"Reporting from Washington— Acting Solicitor Gen. Neal Katyal, in an extraordinary admission of misconduct, took to task one of his predecessors for hiding evidence and deceiving the Supreme Court in two of the major cases in its history: the World War II rulings that upheld the detention of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans.

Katyal said Tuesday that Charles Fahy, an appointee of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, deliberately hid from the court a report from the Office of Naval Intelligence that concluded the Japanese Americans on the West Coast did not pose a military threat. The report indicated there was no evidence Japanese Americans were disloyal, were acting as spies or were signaling enemy submarines, as some at the time had suggested.

Fahy was defending Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, which authorized forced removals of Japanese Americans from "military areas" in 1942. The solicitor general, the U.S. government's top courtroom attorney, is viewed as the most important and trusted lawyer to appear before the Supreme Court, and Katyal said he had a "duty of absolute candor in our representations to the court."

So they knew. They didn't intern Italian-Americans or German-Americans, but they interned (pretty much jailed) 110,000 Japanese-Americans causing them to lose pretty much everything including their dignity.

This brings me to the whole issue of the Weapons of Mass Destruction.

And yet through my anger I have to remember one thing. We are living in a country where we can bring these things to light and try to make it right.

In the case of the Internment Camps, it came too late for most of those who suffered. And yet, it did come to light and hopefully will make those in power think before they do it again.

I hope.

TROUBLE WITH BLOGSPOT:
I've just figured out that the people I've been unable to leave a comment with are the ones where the comments are embedded below the post. It seems I can comment on the ones who have a pop-up comment window or the full page. Strange that Blogger is having so much trouble lately.

Blogspot Postscript: I've also found that I can usually manage to post a comment on those embedded comment boxes if I choose ANONYMOUS instead of Google Account.

Boys and Girls and Guns

Well, it's not just on the mainland anymore.

Even here in Hawaii, a child was reported to have brought a handgun into school and it went off, nearly hitting one of his friends. He was a 14 year old middle schooler. He said he found the handgun in a secluded area of the school and took it. When he later showed it to his friends, he aimed it playfully at one of them. Another friend knocked the gun away and it discharged. It put a hole in the jacket of one of his friends and ricocheted on a wall causing fragments to injure another friend.

It makes me mad that we can't have stricter guns laws in the U.S. I mean seriously, come on! What will it take?



This reminds of a 20/20 or Dateline show where they hid a gun in the boys and girls locker rooms with a hidden camera. They interviewed parents asking what they thought their kids (I think they were grade school children) would do. The parents all said their kids knew better and would inform authorities.

The hidden cameras showed that the parents of girls were right. Their daughters informed adults right away.

Now the boys; that's a different story. Their parents were shocked to see them take the gun out of the locker, hold it and play with it.

I know my daughter would have done the right thing and called a teacher. My son? I don't even want to guess. I don't even want to know. Well, I would, but I'm sort of afraid of what I might find out.

Is it the testosterone thing? Movies? Underdeveloped male brains? Lack of male common sense?

Sigh...

Alaskan Cruise Recommendations

We're planning to take my mother and aunt on an Alaskan Cruise in late summer. We're doing the Princess Cruise Lines which we're hoping will be good. It was recommended highly by some very food friends.

Now comes a quandary. We're trying to figure out some ideas for those side trips when we're in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway because we've got a goodly amount of time there and I'm thinking just walking around might not be enough, even with the wheelchair (for my mom and aunt, just in case). We also have two 80+ ladies with bad knees so no hiking. And we all need the bathroom so no 3 hour rafting trip. My mother will never get on a helicopter so forget that one. Ummm... the cost is rather prohibitive too.

Has anybody gone on one of these cruises and can tell us what might be good?

Not Raptured, But Having Lots of Questions

It was in the news that May 21st was supposed to be the day of Rapture... Judgement Day.

Harold Camping, a radio broadcaster predicted that the world was coming to an end at 6:00 PM. He said he's managed to crack the code in the Bible and figure out when the end would happen. Apparently, he said the same thing in 1994. I think there's another recalculation and I've heard somewhere that it's actually going to be October of this year.

I'm sorry for being skeptical, but it did make me wonder.

And I had some questions because I just don't understand the concept.

Why would your clothes be left behind and just your body taken? If you're going to heaven why do you need your physical body? Wouldn't you just die and leave your body behind too? Will everybody raptured be naked in heaven?

I heard some place that there's supposed to be 200 million saved? Why that number? What about people who have already died? Do they count in the 200 million limit? I just googled and discovered there are about 2.1 billion Christians in the world. It's rather hard to imagine only 200 million of them getting chosen to go to heaven. Is 200 million really in the Bible?

What do you have to do to be raptured? Is it enough to be good and a Christian because I'd venture to say there's more than 200 million Christians who are good and believe? Why did that fellow have to advertise and use all his life savings to tell everybody to prepare?

How do you prepare? Obviously you don't have to pack. Why bother giving away your things since the world is supposed to end for everybody anyway?

Do all those people who believe have the answers? I guess I now have until October to find out.

The Agony of Buying a Swimsuit!

Kathy mentioned (in her previous comment) that I might want to bring a swim suit on our trip to Yellowstone.

There's this tiny problem. I don't have the same figure I did when I was 18 and the one swim suit I've had for a couple of decades shows it. So NO swimsuit!

My figure now is a bit more like the one I had a few months before my daughter was born.

I have skinny wrists and ankles. People assume the rest of me is proportional. That's because I cover up what I prefer to be kept hidden.

Tiffany just e-mailed me to say her husband was treating us to a hotel during our trip that would be right next to a water park because KC loves playing in water. "Don't forget to pack a swim suit," she says.

Siiiiigh....

Tiffany mentioned a while ago that a tankini might be what I'm looking for. It's like a bikini but there's a skirt dropping from the bra top to hide that part of me that ummmm... gets to places ahead of me.

So today Art and I shopped at the Navy Exchange to look for a suit. There was one...only one possibility there. It cost $29.00 so I figured it was worth a try. That's the suit on the left.

We also stopped at Target. Nope! Nothing there I could even consider.

I was feeling like Cathy in that cartoon strip who always struggled with buying a swim suit every spring. Those mirrors in the dressing rooms are very unforgiving and way too honest.

A couple of hours later, we happened to be at Ross and actually found another tankini. It was a Jantzen with an $89.00 price tag reduced to $19.00.

When we got home, I modeled them for Art and he said as tactfully as he could that the Ross suit on the right seemed to fit better. The bottom had a skirt that was rather modest and the bodice skirt was fuller unlike the one on the left. You can't tell from the photo, I suppose, but there was NO WAY I was going to have Art take a photo of me in them to illustrate the proof of it for this post.

If you get right down to it, I suppose I was trying to find a bathing suit like this. Unfortunately, neither Walmart nor Macy's carries this anymore.

Ah well... I'm ready for that water park with KC now.

I hope the hotel provides big towels.

Quinoa Salad

Some of you asked for the quinoa salad recipe. The recipe has many variations because the cook is supposed to just stick in whatever they enjoy.

We were told at our Vegan class that quinoa is very healthy for you because of its high nutritional value.

This is from Wikipedia:

Quinoa was of great nutritional importance in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations, secondary only to the potato, and was followed in importance by maize. In contemporary times, this crop has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), and like oats, quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source among plant foods. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is being considered a possible crop in NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned spaceflights.

Quinoa can be used as a grain such as rice.

Cook quinoa:1 part quinoa to 2 parts water and cook for about 15 minutes. Quinoa can also be cooked in a rice cooker.

Seasonings for salad:

Our presenter just used the oil from the sun dried tomatoes, coarse sea salt, coarse ground pepper and balsamic vinegar.

I also added some Kraft Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing.

Cut FIRM TOFU into cubes.

Vegetable Options:

Cucumber
Red peppers (sweet)
Green onions
Broccoli
Cauliflower

Canned or bottled:
Kidney beans
Garbanzo beans
Artichoke hearts
Green olives (This adds quite a bit of flavoring. Art says it's the salt.)
Sun dried tomatoes
Raisins or dried cranberries
Corn
3 bean salad (I used Green Giant) This adds quite a bit of flavor

Toss everything together, cool, and enjoy. It's great in hot summer weather. Note of caution. This is like me making chicken soup. It ends up being a LOT!


By the Way: I'm been wanting badly to catch up on my visiting with all of you, but I'm in the final stages of completing Art's genealogy on his mother's side. It is taking up almost all my waking hours. If you see any photos of me now, my eyes will be bloodshot. I want to get close to finishing before our Yellowstone trip because you KNOW I'm going to have a few thousand photos to organize after that expedition.

The Iron You blog has a great post explaining all about quinoa.  Do check it out for more information.

Spooning a Cucumber

I went to a Vegan class and learned how to use quinoa. By the way, I found a four pound bag of quinoa selling for about $9.00 at Costco. What a surprise since I paid about that much at the Navy Exchange for less than half that amount.

So now I have a lot of quinoa.

I decided to make a salad to have with Art's cousin, Renee who I take Zumba with. It's a great, cool, healthy sort of meal for a lunch after sweating it out at Zumba. I needed to add some cucumber and remembered a tip I got from another cooking class for Heart Healthy foods that I went to with some friends recently. I know. I know. You probably already knew about this trick, but I thought it was so neat.

And yes, Art (whose family owned a restaurant) already knew this too. I suppose I'm the last one to learn this.

The presenter was a doctor who said Mediterranean foods are great for the heart. A lot of the recipes he was sharing with us were Greek. I don't think I'll make it because it required more than five ingredients. I'm a very lazy cook!

Anyway, he said that when you add cucumbers it's good to take out the seeds because it often adds too much moisture to the dish and reduces the flavor from the seasoning. He showed us how you use a spoon to gently scoop out the seeds.

That never occurred to me. He also recommended using Japanese cucumbers because they don't have that waxy coating on it. That much I already knew. I can get cucumbers quite cheap at the Open (Farmer's) Market.

Another tip: When you are measuring honey, wipe some oil into your measuring cup first. All the honey will pour easily out of the cup.

Eat Greek yogurt. It's supposed to be better for you. I have some in the fridge right now.

Even if I haven't made many or rather any of the recipes he showed us, I was thrilled to have come away with these tips.

And let's face it, I just liked eating all the samples he passed out.

Grand Memories

Our son, Jon and his Sarah went to the Grand Canyon to celebrate the end of this semester's studies. Apparently they gazed over the edge and some ladies watching them were so concerned they took their photo and e-mailed it to them after a friendly chat. I really think this is a gorgeous shot. It's been minimized quite a bit and you can't get the details, but I love it.

This reminded me of the trip to the Southwest that we took with the kids in 1993.

We hiked down the narrow Grand Canyon trail. I was out of condition even then. Art and Jon continued on down quite a bit more, and Tiffany and I started climbing back up the trail to the car.

I was out of breath, but had to laugh when Tiffany started coaxing me with, "Come on, mom. You can do it. We can have a drink of water on the next switchback turn."

Who's the kid now?

We stopped to take this photo which made it look like she was in a precarious position just like the top photo. (Although knowing my son, it probably wasn't as safe as I would like).

When we neared the top, Tif suddenly shouted, "RUN!"

"What?" Was she nuts?

"Run, Mom! We're on flat ground! You can run. Hurry! We need to get to the car!"

OK... My daughter had lost her mind, so I figured I had to stick with her to make sure she was OK. I ran after her. We reached the car, got in quickly and plopped down out of breath. Tif rolled down the window.

I heard a thundering of footsteps rumble past the car, Jon barely able to check his speed and Tiffany burst out laughing hysterically.

She somehow realized that knowing her brother, he would try to beat her to the car. He almost did.

Art came up several long minutes later a little (maybe more than a little) annoyed that Jon had run up ahead carrying all the heavy water bottles without quite explaining the reason for his urgency.

When he saw Tiffany bowed over in the car laughing, Art realized why.

We both already knew we had crazy children. This just confirmed it.

A Request to New Doctors

I was remembering some of the speeches given at Brandon's convocation ceremonies from the School of Medicine on Sunday.

When receiving his diploma, one new M.D. said, "We were told we could only provide a 30 word thank you. Therefore, everything the other guys said, ditto for me. I'll see you all later. To be continued..."

Another student said, "I want to thank my parents for all their support. The M. stands for Mom and the D. is for Dad."

The Keynote address given by Dr. Darrell Kirch really struck a chord with me.

He was told to give a charge to the new doctors for the course of their medical career. He said he didn't have a charge, but a request. He told the new doctors that his baby boomer colleagues were not able to revolutionize or correct the medical system. Too many people in America are not able to afford good medical care or any medical care at all.

Right away I remembered how excruciatingly difficult it was for Art to find a G.P. who would take a new Medicare patient. Then the G.P. he did find said, "Good luck trying to find a doctor who will do a colonoscopy for a Medicare patient in Hawaii."

Dr. Kirch mentioned how the Democrats, Republicans and Tea Partiers were arguing about the new Health Care law. There's a step made now to try to make things better, but it still isn't perfect. There are still nearly 50 million Americans who are uninsured.

I don't remember his exact words, but what I thought he asked of this new group of doctors was for them to do the right, fair thing. He asked them to work actively to make things better for all people of every income bracket, including those who cannot afford it.

Then they read the Restatement of the Oath of Hippocrates. Part of it said, "I will treat without exception all who seek my ministrations and discriminate against no one, so long as the treatment of others is not compromised thereby, and I will seek the counsel of particularly skilled physicians where indicated for the benefit of my patient."

Seems to me that part about "discriminating against no one" should include Medicare patients.

Our health care system in the U.S. badly needs to be fixed! I'm just hoping the next generation will do a far better job than the present one.

What to Pack?

OK... I'm starting to make a list of the things we need for our Yellowstone trip. What to bring, what to bring...

So far this is what I have. (Click to enlarge and see more clearly.)


Anything to add? The nice thing is we're going to the mainland. I know you've got drugstores and Targets and supermarkets and... I know I don't have to worry about much except the gas prices.

I guess all our blouses will be long sleeved. The one big mistake we made was in going too early. Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun road will still be closed. I'm hoping we'll get an early spring thaw that MIGHT get the snow off the road. What are the chances?

Oh my... I almost forgot! The wheelchair! We're bringing the wheelchair because I don't know when my mother's knees might give out again. We're not taking any chances, no siree. Art and I will be sharing a suitcase. My mother and aunt will each have their own because they aren't really quite flexible on what they can do without.

So did I forget anything?

Oh wait! Tif said I should ask my nurse practitioner about a Scopolamine (transderm-scop) patch. She says it's supposed to help with car sickness and I can use it for our cruise later in the year also.

OK... anything else?

Destined To Be a Doctor

In 1990, my childhood friend, Diane and her family came to visit us in Illinois from Hawaii. She brought her husband, Dave (that amazing photographer who does our family photos) and children, Brandon and Kristen.

Brandon was a marvel. He talked a mile a minute and wanted to learn and know everything. There was a constant barrage of questions. Everything around him was a curiosity. He would spend nights sitting on his father's lap in our backyard staring at fire flies. He was interested in everything. Squirrels... chipmunks... whatever...

We were surprised when we arrived in Hawaii a few years ago that he still had an Illinois cicada wing because he was so fascinated by the jeweled colors on one of nature's precious creatures.


When Brandon learned that we were renovating my mother's house in 2006 to move back to Hawaii, he insisted that he wanted to help. He actually took time from his busy studies to come and help Art tile the bathroom floor.


And then... he came back again on another day to help Art dig up a very stubborn bush that Art wanted to transplant to another location. Art wanted to save the bush because the plumbers were going to dig a line to the house.

Brandon nearly wilted from digging in the HOT sun for several long, tedious hours. He really is as tenacious as Art (and that bush). When he says he's going to do something, he's going to follow through no matter how hard it is. The tree was planted in its new location, but died in the weeks ahead. Alas!

We attended Brandon's Convocation ceremony yesterday. He has finished his internship and will now be doing his residency. He is now Dr. Brandon! As if that wasn't enough he was also given two special awards. On top of being in the Honor Medical Society, he received the Maurice Brodsky Memorial Award for excellence in pulmonary medicine and the one I thought he should be most proud of because the recipient of this award was chosen by class vote. It was the Po'okela No'eau Award to recognize the student with characteristics which best exemplify the qualities of the ideal physician!

I was looking at him up on the stage and remembering that little boy who was wondering how fire flies could light up the night.


When I gave him his lei of congratulations I was bursting with pride. Diane and Dave don't like to brag about their son, but I know how ecstatic they were and I'll have to do the bragging for them.


Brandon's wife and daughter were there to add their smiles of joy to the day.

Soon the leis were threatening to pile up and cover his face. Brandon is loved by everybody because he cares about everybody. If I have a medical question about anything, he's always willing to tell me what he's learned. I LOVE it! I just hope he'll set up his practice in Hawaii. I'll bet he'd accept Medicare patients.

Diane and Dave invited us to a family luncheon at Wah Kung Restaurant. I have to tell you the food was amazing. I ate way too much. Notice I ate first and took the photo after. These were only the first few dishes that arrived.

At one point during the meal, Brandon leaned over and asked, "Auntie Kay, how long do you think you can keep posting everyday?"

You see? He still hasn't stopped asking questions. I just love this kid. That's Dr. Kid, mind you!

Boston Stitches

Our nephews, Cody and Barry came to Illinois for a visit in 1999 from Hawaii. Art and I decided to take them for a whirlwind trip to Indiana, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Williamsburg in Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, N.Y., Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., Boston, Plymoth Plantation, Acadia National Park, Quebec and Toronto in Canada and the Niagara Falls.

The funny thing is, what I remember most is Boston. Why? Well, it was July 13th. I don't remember if it was Friday. We were on the Freedom Trail. This is Paul Revere's house.


Cody was running or skipping down the hill ahead of us and took a spill. I held my breath and took a look. Yikes!
His thigh had a cut on it that looked deep. Art carried him most of the way up the hill and then went to search for the nearest place to get first aid. Barry and I locked hands and carried him together. Not easy. Cody is over six feet tall now, and he was not light then either. He might look like he wasn't that heavy, but I could swear he was at least 200 pounds.

We stopped at a drug store and the woman there came out to us and brought hydrogen peroxide and bandages. She poured it on the cut and directed us to a clinic thankfully close by.

The nurse at the clinic said they did not do surgery but we could take the next free shuttle to the hospital. We couldn't believe how efficient they were!


The shuttle took us to the emergency room and the doctors worked on Cody right away. Cody kept a stiff upper lip and his brother considered this just another adventure to tell their mom and dad about.

Then came the problem. The doctor said to bring Cody back in a few days to have the stitches removed. I told her we couldn't because we'd be in Canada by then.

"No problem," she assured me. "Do you sew?"

"Yes," I said. I didn't like where this was going.

She took out a kit with scissors, tweezers, etc. and showed me how to remove the stitches. She then had me practice on paper to make sure I got it right.

We continued on our trip with Cody barely paying attention to his wound. We had a great time! We got to see Acadia National Park, Quebec, Toronto and finish our trip with Niagara Falls.

When we got home, I took out the kit and told Cody it was time to remove the stitches. He didn't exactly look confident. I told him, "Don't worry. I know how to sew."

When I lifted and cut the first stitch slowly, he grimaced. My stomach did a somersault. I learned that it was better to do it quickly, but by then I was sweating and my hands were shaking.

Needless to say, Cody survived and this is what I remember most.

And by the way, if you need to have an accident, it's best to do it in Boston. They sure do have great medical services there.

Tai Chi Birthday

Thursday was a happy day, despite the Blogspot troubles. I love Thursdays because barring any rain, we have tai-chi in Mililani. Master Pong teaches classes for free because he believes in passing on his knowledge for health, fitness and peace with love instead of for gain.

After days of rain, the weather brightened for us. I noticed that other trees were in bloom besides the African tulips.

These trees were a bouquet of pinkish trumpet blooms.


This is the park where we practice and learn tai-chi and do our chi-gung exercises. We've tried tai-chi in Chicago and near our home here in Hawaii. It's been nice, but we ended up quitting because we often go on trips and return to find we have too much difficulty catching up.

We love being outdoors for our lessons. You can somehow feel the chi (energy) more when you're outside under the trees looking up into the skies. There's a sense of peace and happiness that can't be duplicated if you're inside a building staring at walls.


Master Pong was having his 85th birthday and a bunch of students gathered together at a restaurant to celebrate this most wonderful day with our teacher.

I know you're looking at the food. Yes, there was lots of it. Again. I was careful to just take a little bite of each dish. I know Art is smiling with an eyebrow raised as he reads this.

Master Pong teaches several classes throughout the week (with a long waiting list) without accepting any financial compensation. He says he used to be a sickly child until his adulthood when he took up tai-chi. Looking at the strength and vitality of this man, I believe in his lessons. Now, if only I could remember to practice everyday.

Backing In

Wow! It sure was aggravating to have Blogspot on the blink all of yesterday! I'm glad it seems to be working again so here goes!

There's been a driving trait in Hawaii that we've been noticing. People tend to back into parking spaces. Sometimes it takes several tries for somebody to do it, but we all wait patiently while they maneuver their vehicles into tight spots.

The thing is, we almost never did it in Illinois. Granted, I never paid much attention to parking in Illinois. I just assumed everybody went straight in.

I wonder why this tactic came to be here. Art is an excellent driver, but he doesn't even try to back into a space. I can't even parallel park so I won't even consider it. Seems to me it really requires a lot of practice and talent.

What do you all do in your neck of the woods?

Tulips in Hawaii

I had to "rePublish" this post because of the Blogger problems. When I did, all your comments disappeared. I know you all wrote some wonderful comments. Please know that I did read them. Thank you so much!
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One harbinger of spring that I miss are tulips. Going to Skagit Valley in Washingon State was a highlight of our travels to the Northwest two years ago. You already know how we loved seeing the incredible array of tulips at Keukenhof in the Netherlands.

Hawaii has no tulips of the regular kind except in the flower shops.

However, we do have African tulips (Spathodea campanulata). The blossoms in this case are in the trees all around the islands from April to June. It really is very beautiful even if I do take them for granted.

You can see by the shape of the flowers why it's called a tulip.

So I suppose even though we don't have tulips to mark the advent of spring, we do have African Tulips. When this season is over I think we'll have the Shower Tree season. That's really wonderful to behold too!