Asparagus, Cicadas and the Rose

Friday, May 17th, Ed made jajangmyeon for us. Didn't I tell you he's a wonderful son-in-law and a great cook?  (I got this explanation for jajangmyeon from Wikipedia.)

Jajangmyeon or jjajangmyeon is a Korean Chinese noodle dish topped with a thick sauce made of chunjang, diced pork and vegetables. It originated in Incheon, Korea where Chinese migrant workers brought over zhajiangmian from Shandong in the late 19th century.

And yes, it was absolutely wonderful. Ed has introduced us to so many Korean dishes that we've come to love.

It was Saturday, May 18th. Tif wanted to go to the Farmer's Market and we were happy to go along.

When we were at our friend's home three days before, Terry had served prosciutto wrapped asparagus. It was absolute heaven!!! I could have eaten the whole tray. Therefore, when we saw this array of asparagus, we had to buy some. We then stopped at Whole Foods to pick up prosciutto. 

Rolling the asparagus in prosciutto took quite a bit of time. 

We then baked it and it was delicious, but not quite as perfectly crispy as what Terry served. 

This will take more trial and errors, I think. 

Sunday was going to be KC's dance performance. Tiffany showed us the many costumes KC would be wearing. KC was only 14 years old when we last saw her dance in person. We were looking forward to seeing her now at the Performing Arts Center.

Meanwhile... friends in Hawaii were curious about the 17 year cicada that was supposed to make its appearance in Illinois along with the 13 year. 

So far, we'd only seen this one cicada when a young boy who lived down the street came running over to show us what he'd found that day. 

It was the first red-eyed cicada we'd seen. The cold weather we'd been having was inhibiting their appearance. 

And then... my good friend and classmate, Yvonne from elementary and high school days who happened to be in the area texted this photo to me.

Gracious! I've never seen one like this!

It's possible it's newly molted. But gee... really?

OK... And here's the rose after 7 days. Tried a different angle. I couldn't believe how beautiful it still looked!

This was Saturday. Sunday was to be KC's Big Show! 

Friends for a Lifetime

Tuesday, May 14th was a busy day. 

Tif's family likes corned beef hash patties.

However, they are a pain in the butt to prepare and you need a chunk of time to make it. I sauté chopped onions in butter and add them to mashed potatoes and a can of corned beef. Then I have to flour the patties, dip them in egg and then corn meal before frying. It took me almost three hours to do it and then I froze them so they could have it after we leave.

Ed introduced us to Jackson's Sweet Potato Chips which they buy at Costco. We figured they didn't have it here in Hawaii. Would you believe we brought home three big bags of these sweet potato chips? 😂

We were planning to visit with some special friends the following day. Jim has been having chemo therapy and was immunocompromised so we made sure to take a COVID test twice before visiting with them the following day.

Wednesday, May 15th: 

It was wonderful to see these special friends again. We hadn't seen them since before the pandemic. 

Art had met them in 1974 when he worked at EPA in Chicago and they became our lifelong friends.

Since we all had January wedding anniversaries, it became tradition for us to go to a restaurant and then see a movie together.

Later, we ended up taking turns hosting each other to an anniversary dinner at each other's homes. We'd celebrated our anniversaries together for almost 30 years until we left for Hawaii!

These two special couples attended so many of our kids' activities, helped us with the renovation of our Illinois home and supported us in a million other ways.

Diane brought an anniversary cake for dessert.

It was absolutely amazing to be together again.

And later that night, Art took another photo of my rose on his iPhone using the Portrait feature.

POSTSCRIPT:

Good grief! After all the trouble we went through to bring home those 3 big bags of sweet potato chips.... sigh...

We went to Costco here in Hawaii and saw this. 🙄

We paid $5.89 in Illinois vs. the $5.99 in Hawaii. On the other hand, we have 4.712% tax in Hawaii.

Illinois tax is 12%. 😲

Maybe Tiffany would like to bring some home in her luggage next time they're in Hawaii. 😂

My Teacher Buddies

I had not been able to see my teacher friends for four years. Since 2006 they kindly scheduled a get together whenever I returned to Illinois. However, the last time I was able to meet with them was in 2020 before the pandemic. The wonderful thing about technology is that we are all still able to connect often by texting and email.

A luncheon was confirmed as soon as my arrival date was set.

Gerri made a reservation for us at the Wildfire Restaurant wine room which is very private and cozy.

Once together, it was like I'd never been gone. We were all the same except for more gray hairs on my head and some.... uuuuummm... added wrinkles on my face.

Sally gave each of us a rose. Other teachers brought treats to share.

One of the servers kindly took this group photo for us. 

I had fun later using my iPhone to place us in front of the Bean in Chicago and even at Hanauma Bay here on Oahu.

They all enjoyed seeing these photos.

And then I was able to use Photoshop to place us in front of our school along with two friends who weren't able to join us.

Later that evening I decided to use a dark dress behind the rose to take this photo. I liked the photo so much, I decided to do a sequence on the Life of the Rose. I was surprised at how long that rose maintained its beauty.

You know... like the rose, the friendship of this group of teachers truly did endure the test of time.

Mother's Day in Illinois and Hawaii

It was Mother's Day and Tif, Ed and KC wanted to make it special for me.

However, Art wanted to do something special for Tiffany also so he worked in the garden with her clearing out her raised bed and planting lettuce and herbs in it. 

They both worked around the yard pruning and clearing weeds for spring planting.

Ed grilled some New York strip steaks and I received these wonderful slip-on sneakers and long pants to wear on trips. I had no idea Skechers made these. I love it! 

They also gave Art an early Father's Day gift of a Samsung tablet on which to read his newspaper since we'd be going to the digital version of the Star Advertiser.

We hadn't eaten steak in a long time because mom needs soft foods. 

Tif prepared stir fried spinach and air fried brussels sprouts. It was fabulous!

The steak with two kinds of dips they made was just amazing!

And to top it off.

Oh my gosh!

I hadn't had Cheesecake Factory's Linda's fudge cake in such a long, long time. Ed had gone out special just so I could have it.

I do have the BEST son-in-law ever!

And back in Hawaii, my brother and sister-in-law, Nancy had taken mom, my nephew and his wife out for a special dinner that everyone enjoyed. 

Knowing that mom could have this happy day with my brother and his family made it that much more special for me.

Spring Flowers and Solar Flares

Life is so different in Illinois from Hawaii. I'd missed that ecstatic spring feeling of renewal with flowers bursting forth with colors and scents in Illinois.

There were lilacs blooming everywhere. Absolutely EVERYWHERE! I'm told the scent was wonderful. Unfortunately, since I've lost my sense of smell, I couldn't experience it, but I loved seeing them.

I also loved seeing the Lilies of the Valley in our backyard, too. (It used to be our backyard before Tif and her husband bought it from us.) Tif did say the ground cover of shy flowers were encroaching on their lawn. 😏 I still remember a student bringing me a bunch of them and my smelling them all day at my desk.

And bunnies! There were a LOT of bunnies! Tif doesn't love them because they enjoy dining on her vegetable garden. We had noticed a LOT more bunnies after the West Nile Disease killed a lot of the larger predatory birds like crows. I've read that the crow population is increasing again.

Our son-in-law, Ed and Tiffany made bi bim bop for us. We keep paying a lot to order it in Hawaii, so they wanted to show us that we can make it ourselves more economically if we buy the ingredients at a Korean market. 

Meanwhile, my brother, Dennis told me that a huge solar flare was expected to hit as far south as Chicago. We went out that night but couldn't see anything. There really is too much light pollution in Chicagoland.

However, the following day, granddaughter KC's college friend sent this photo from the beach alongside Lake Michigan. (They took the photo at 2:30 AM!!!)

So the following night, Art and Ed went out on the deck to see if they could get a glimpse of the solar flare.

Nope. Nothing.

However, they did see the International Space Station cruise by which made their night watch worthwhile. 😄

Hawaii to Illinois

Here I am. Back again in Hawaii. It's taken me quite a bit of time to get over the jet lag malaise that hit me on our return. My pilot cousin told me to expect 1 day of recuperation for every hour of time zone separation. It's 5 hours between Hawaii and Illinois. It took a bit more than 5 days to get back to normal. It didn't affect Art much at all.

Anyway, as I said... here I am. I'll be recording our stay on the mainland here just because my memory is failing and this is my way to remember what happened.

Lately, it seems that every time we're about to leave home for a trip... something happens.

Last year, when we were leaving for Tokyo to meet our daughter, son and their families for the first time since the pandemic started, mom fell on her head. 

Thank goodness my brother was able to handle the ER visit and keep us updated.

This time, my brother ended up with double vision and couldn't drive us to the airport. (He and my sister-in-law were taking over mom's care while we were gone.) I planned on Uber, but our wonderful friend, Dave jumped in and volunteered to drive us instead. We did the United on-line check in again which was very convenient and the Bag Drop Shortcut was great too!

It was fun to see Diamond Head from the air. This isn't a view you often see of Diamond Head. I got this information from Wikipedia:

Diamond Head is a volcanic tuff cone on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu. It is known to Hawaiians as Lēʻahi, which is most likely derived from lae (browridge, promontory) plus ʻahi (tuna) because the shape of the ridgeline resembles the shape of a tuna's dorsal fin. Its English name was given by British sailors in the 19th century, who named it for the calcite crystals on the adjacent beach.

We left the island of Oahu with clear, sunny skies and very warm temperatures.

And arrived at O'Hare airport (on time 😄) to rain and cold. But it was lovely to be back. The welcoming banner with a photo of the Chicago River made us smile.

Tiffany came to pick us up and take us home through the pouring rain.

One of our dear relatives sent us this photo of the Honolulu Zoo parking lot that was flooded with a sudden downpour a day later. It would rain almost continuously while we were gone!
And me? I was now cold! I'd forgotten how changeable Midwest spring weather can be. Granted Tif was not cold. It took a while for Art and me to get acclimated to the cooler temperatures.
But gosh... It was sure nice to be back again.

Watching Our Granddaughter Dance

We were not able to visit our granddaughter, KC for a couple of years while the COVID pandemic raged across the country. 

We were finally able to see her dance again last year at her high school which was wonderful but they were just short skits. 

KC has since been in a number of dance competitions and there will be a huge dance performance at a theater this month. We just have to go.  It was this or the eclipse (in Indiana) and of course, KC's dance show won! 

I've gotten ready with something special to give her from Hawaii. Our daughter tells us the house is usually filled with flowers everywhere after a performance, we wanted to give her something that will last just a little longer. 

My friend, Diane had conveniently given me a lot of lei kits a couple of years ago so we bought some candy and artificial flowers to make the lei extra special.

To make it extra, extra special we went to the bank and asked for some crispy money. The teller chuckled knowing exactly what we'd be needing it for and warned us not to fold them into origami creations to add to our leis. 

She said the bank would not accept money that was folded (like this) because they would not be able to put it into their money counter.

No problem. I'm too lazy. I just roll the money around Twix bars so they keep their shape. I'd also asked Tiffany what our granddaughter's favorite candies were. She said KC was not a big candy eater, but not to worry because our son-in-law would help her out. 😂

OK, so we're ready to go.

I think.

I need to check my list and check it twice and thrice. 😳 Did I tell you already that I'm not a good traveler? 🤞

I'll let you know how it all goes when we get back.💝

Getting Ready to Leave for Illinois

We're leaving for Illinois to visit our daughter, Tif and her family this month. However, with mom's worsening dementia it's taking quite a bit more preparation to get my brother, Dennis ready to take over her care at our house.

So much of our lives have changed in just the last couple of years. We can't really leave to travel for very long because it's not fair to Dennis to keep him away from his family.

I have all kinds of signs in Japanese (I love the Google Translate app.) here and there to remind mom what to do. I have to make sure her medications are given at the proper times and to check her blood pressure daily. I have the most wonderful Kaiser doctors who answer all my questions and provide me with important information whenever I ask. Her geriatric nurse even calls every few weeks to check in with me. I'm so very grateful! 

I provide mom with word game activities and puzzles to try to keep her mind active. Luckily, Art does take over half of her care by driving her to daycare 3 times a week, watching what she eats, preparing a lot of her meals and so many other things. It's been wonderful that my brother now takes over picking her up to bring her home.

I wrote four pages of instructions for Dennis to look over so he knows what to do. I've frozen some food for him to defrost for dinners.

I am truly lucky to have a brother who is always here when we need him to help care for mom. 

If my daughter or son were here in Hawaii I know I could count on them to help too, but unfortunately they are an ocean away.

Sigh...

We'll do the best we can. Mom had a life full of struggles and she made sure we would have the best lives possible. 

It's our privilege to see that she can be comfortable in her declining years. 

The best thing we hear is when she tells us this is the happiest she's been in her life. 💗

Poor Pitiful Poha Plant

We have become good friends with 3 other couples we met at tai chi more than 10 years ago. We always laugh because in our small group, we have two Kays and two Calvins. We've also traveled with two of the couples to Europe.

Anyway, some time in January, the other Kay said a relative had given her several little pots of Poha plants. The other name for Poha is Physalis peruviana, Ground Cherry, Cape Gooseberry or Goldenberry. We were all given a small potted plant.

Someone said it could grow wild so putting it in a bigger pot might be a good way to contain them. It would be a race to see which of us would be able to have the first berry. 😁 OK, that would be a challenge since I do have a significantly brown thumb.

However, one month later.... Yay! The teeny Poha plant had grown lush and beautiful! There were flowers and even some fruit already starting. 

Ummm.... When I saw Myra's plant which was smaller, I crowed, "I win!" 

I was kidding.... sort of. Art shook his head, smirked and said, "Bachi..."  Bachi is a Japanese word meaning something like divine retribution or punishment.

A couple of weeks later, I was noticing little mushrooms in the dirt. 😕 I didn't think about the fact that the planter saucer at the bottom might be keeping the dirt too wet with all the recent rainfalls, thus causing mushrooms to grow.

And then we saw that there were actually two plants in there and one was looking decidedly unhealthy. We took away the saucer so the dirt wouldn't stay wet, but that sad plant died leaving behind its sibling.

We decided to see if we could save that remaining Poha plant and tenderly nestled it into an unused garden space instead.

And then we kept it watered, but sparingly and watched over it like a mother hen. It seemed to be giving up. My sister-in-law who is another Kay said we should talk to it and be sure the soil is well drained.

We were giving up hope when suddenly, one morning, it seemed to perk up.

However, leaves were falling off the poor Poha.

When I looked under the leaves, I saw these terrible, voracious bugs who were eating the last few leaves off our valiant Poha.

I looked under the leaves and started smashing all the nasty, disgusting bugs.

When I told Art about it, he wanted to know what kind of bugs they were. 

Apparently, I hadn't killed them all because Art brought in a couple of leaves with a bunch of bugs on them.

He got out the magnifying glass and started looking at them on my desk. The bugs started exploring their new surroundings. 

They began crawling along a paper clip. 

Art asked me to hold up the paper clip with my fingers so he could take a photo of the bug with his iPhone.

And no, I didn't PhotoShop any of the bugs. 

What looks like an eye is just some sort of reflection on the bug's head.

But now I felt bad (sort of) for killing all his friends.

Now they looked sort of cute...

Sigh...

And then...

A day later, my little Poha plant had even less leaves.

I didn't know whether I should but I gave it some fertilizer in the evening.

The following morning, I saw something green near the stalk.

Could it be?

Is that a baby Poha shoot?

Fingers crossed.

But then a week or so later.

Sigh...

Mom had asked for the clippers so she could trim the bushes in front of our house. We thought that would be OK, but she decided to clip other things forgetting that we'd asked her to absolutely stay away from the Poha. We were aghast to see that she'd chopped off our baby Poha shoot.

And of course, she could not remember doing so. 

Sigh...

But then...almost 2 weeks later, our Poha decided to try again.

This time, Art decided to put up some orange tape and I wrote in Japanese, "Please do not touch."

Will it work? 🤞

And here we were at May 7th!

Fingers crossed 🤞 we will see a fruit in a month or two. Maybe...

By the way, Myra's plant is much, much, much bigger. 😂

Learning Japanese Is HARD!

Seriously.

Reading, writing and speaking in Japanese IS not easy. When we used to go to Japan together, mom would caution me to speak in English unless I was with family. They already know my Japanese is often funny, inventive or ???

I actually grew up speaking Japanese until I was in the 1st grade because we lived in the middle of a sugar cane field in a large plantation house with my grandparents with no neighbors until I was in the 1st grade. I have a report card where my teacher commented that I was finally speaking English more fluently. Mom always spoke to me in Japanese and expected me to answer in Japanese. Why she didn't require my baby brother to do the same is a puzzle to me.

So why am I thinking about all this? 

Mom is now struggling with dementia so we are having to do more and more things for her. We take care of all her needs. We have to make her oatmeal breakfast because we can't trust her with the stove.

Anyway, the other morning I told her in Japanese that she could get the "mizu" (water) for her instant oatmeal. (I'd added dried fruit to the instant oatmeal so she just needed to get and add the already boiled water from the kettle.)

She was dumbfounded. She just couldn't understand what I was trying to tell her to do. 

I finally pointed to the kettle and told her "water" in English. 

"Oh" she said. "That's not mizu. That's oyu!"

😬  Riiiight.... (I actually did know that.)

Mizu is cold water. Oyu is hot water. But sheesh... It's water, for goodness sakes!

Art was standing across the table with a bit of a (I swear it was) smirk. Art does not speak Japanese. He just knows a few words. 🙄 "I knew that one," he said... barely suppressing a laugh.

I looked up what the hardest languages were to learn. Would you believe Japanese always comes up as one of the top 10 hardest to learn languages in the world for English speakers?

I got this from Dictionary.com.

According to the U.S. State Department, the easiest to learn are the Germanic languages like German and Swedish or the Romance languages like Spanish and Italian.

The five languages in the hardest category were:

• Japanese
• Mandarin Chinese
• Cantonese
• Korean
• Arabic

Why Japanese? 

It's got two alphabet categories in Hiragana and Katakana. And then there are the gazillion kanji (characters). 

On top of that there's a language change in the way you speak to people who are at a higher level than you, to friends, and how you address someone below you like a dog, underling, child... whatever.

Also, unlike English, the verb goes at the end. Arrghh! And so on and so forth. Here's an example:

He went to the store.

Kare wa sono mise ni ikimashita. (He that store went.)

So OK...

See what I mean? It's hard.

However, this morning. I did remember to say "oyu" so noooo problem.... 😏  

Sigh...

What to do With a Junky Watermelon

Art prides himself with getting a good, juicy, sweet watermelon. 

Yes, he loves watermelon. 😋 He can't understand how anybody could not love watermelon. You can imagine how shocked he was when he discovered our daughter had developed an allergy to melons when she got older. 

OK, so there we were at Costco when he saw a bunch of huge, heavy, beautiful watermelons and couldn't resist checking for that yellow spot on one side of the fruit and then tapping it for that perfect sound.

He brought it home, put it in the fridge to cool and then cut it.

It was a surprise to find that the watermelon had a very thick rind. I don't think we've ever seen watermelon with rind that thick.

It was a disappointment when we tasted it because it really wasn't very sweet at all. 

In fact, it falls into the category of one of the worst watermelons we've ever bought.

What to do...

What to do...🤔

I suggested making it into a smoothie. We could add a little yogurt and maybe ice cream. However, since Art is a watermelon purist, he decided to just stick the watermelon in the blender and drink it as a very thick smoothie with no other ingredient added that might adulterate it.

And you know what?  

It was pretty darn good. 😄 In fact, mom loved it.

So yay! That saved the day... or rather the watermelon. 😁

Better Late Than Never

I wrote earlier about the emails I sent to the President, our representative and our senators and heard back from everybody except Senator Brian Schatz from whom I merely got a link to his website.

Senator Mazie Hirono's letter came a little late but I was very glad to hear her stance on the human misery happening in Gaza from the Israeli attacks. What happened to the Israelis by Hamas was absolutely horrible but the retribution by Israel of killing 34,000+ civilians is literally over-kill.

I'd given up on Senator Schatz so you can imagine my surprise when I did got this letter from his office.

So OK, I'm glad they all know how I feel. I just hope all this hatred can end someday.

Caregiver Modifications

Mom is needing more and more support as she ages. She'll be 95 this year and has always been in good health. However, her balance deteriorated a year ago so we added a handhold on the left kitchen doorjamb for the slight step down to put on her slippers.

That worked great for a while.

But now we found she was putting all her weight on the door handle for more support. This could be a bit precarious if she pushed on the swinging door.

Sooo... We  had to add another handhold on the right side.

Life is full of modifications and adjustments now in our caregiving.

I wonder what the next change will be.

It's Not 55 cents Anymore?!?

I was looking through my stamps the other day and saw that I was running low.

The Tomie dePaola stamp was sent to me a few months ago by my dear Illinois friend who was the librarian at our school.

OK... So I need more Forever stamps. I love Forever stamps because you don't have to worry about the rising prices of 1st class postage. 

I'm OK with paying the 55¢ to mail my letters.

But then I discovered the prices of Forever stamps were going up in July. 

Uuummm... OK... no problem.

"The cost of a Forever postage stamp is poised to rise in July, under a U.S. Postal Service plan to boost the price of the first-class stamp to 73 cents from the current 68 cents — a price that was just raised in January.

The 5-cent increase would take effect on July 14. If it's approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission, it would be the sixth price hike since January 2021."      ---NPR

Wait. It’s probably going to be 73¢. What?!? When did that happen? I guess I just haven't been paying attention to all the price increases. 

Does this remind you of the frog being boiled myth?

No, we're not exactly boiling over about the price increases because I've read that it's still a good deal compared to what other countries pay. 

I guess.

But this does make me wonder how much of the charity donation funds are going to the mailers they're constantly sending us and everybody else.