Swamped With Charity Mail

 Every time we go to the mailbox, we are exasperated to find tons of charity requests. The sad thing is I'm sure a huge chunk of the donation money they receive is being spent on these mail requests that get immediately dumped into the garbage by a majority of the recipients.

Art has tried to tell people who call on behalf of charities to take our name off their lists, but it hasn't worked. Granted, he's now blocked a bunch of those calls. He's also told them that we make our donations once a year and that's it... unless there's a catastrophe like the Maui wildfire. 

I looked up what you should do about the constant barrage of charity mail and found this on Charity Navigator. Art uses Charity Navigator each year to see which charity uses their donations most efficiently.

One night Art got the idea to mail back those donation envelopes with a request to take our name off their list. He first accumulated a bunch of those envelopes. I then wrote a standard letter asking them to take our name off their mailing list, making sure I gave them our address and printed out a bunch of copies.

And then we mailed them out with our request.

I hope this works. 🤞

POSTSCRIPT:

I thought at first that we were getting less charity mail, but this afternoon we got swamped again. Several envelopes were charities we'd already told to stop.

Aggravation!

Sigh....

A Letter from Mazie

Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz are our United States senators from Hawaii.

I very rarely get involved in politics because most of the times I don't think I know all the ins and outs, here or there of what is going on.

However, the present death toll of 34,000+ Palestinians in Gaza with over 70,000 injured has me so upset that I wrote emails to the President, our representative, Ed Case and Senators Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz telling them how upset I was.

I got this email back from Brian Schatz's office.

Aloha,

Thank you for contacting me. Your thoughts and input are important to me. I will respond to your comments as soon as possible. You can also visit my website for updates at schatz.senate.gov.

Mahalo,
Brian Schatz
U.S. Senator

I then got another email from him telling me what he was doing for Hawaii but nothing to address what I'd written about. Ah well...

Ed Case's email reassured me that he was aware of our opposition to Israel's slaughter of Palestinians and that he agreed that it had to stop. 

Yes, Israel has a right to defend themselves against Hamas. But this is insanity.

I didn't hear from Mazie Hirono's office for a couple of weeks so I wrote again saying I'd heard from the others but not her.

The following morning, I got this email from her:

Dear Ms. ---, Thank you for contacting me regarding the war between Israel and Hamas. On October 7, 2023, Hamas perpetrated an unconscionable violent attack against Israel resulting in the deadliest day in Israel’s history. The ensuing war Israel has waged against Hamas has resulted in the tragic loss of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian lives and created a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Hamas’s stated goal is to eliminate Israel and Israel has every right to defend itself, but to date, it has failed to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.  Israelis and Palestinians deserve to live in peace and safety. I believe that the path forward requires the following three elements: 1) a full and sustained ceasefire in tandem with the immediate release of all hostages, 2) the unfettered flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and 3) a path to a two-state solution. Legitimate concerns have been raised about how the Israeli military has conducted itself. To this end, I have consistently joined a group of my colleagues in pushing the administration to adopt stronger and more stringent reviews of Israeli military action in this matter. Most recently, I joined Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and 13 of my Democratic Senate colleagues in pushing for an explicit requirement that U.S. security aid received by any country, including Israel, be used in accordance with U.S. law, international humanitarian law, and the law of armed conflict, bolstering current law that prohibits U.S. military aid to any country that prevents or restricts U.S. humanitarian assistance to those in need. Heeding our call, the Biden Administration issued a National Security Memorandum (NSM-20) establishing humanitarian safeguards and accountability for any country receiving security aid, including Israel.  On April 20, 2024, the House sent a bipartisan bill to the Senate containing more than $60 billion in critical security aid for Ukraine, along with over $26 billion in security aid for Israel—the majority of which is allocated for humanitarian assistance in Gaza and defensive weapons systems—and over $8 billion for our allies in the Indo-Pacific. Our allies in Ukraine have bravely fended off Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion for more than two years. Additional U.S. assistance will be the difference between victory and defeat in their fight for Ukraine’s very existence.  While I have serious reservations about giving additional aid to Israel without more stringent conditions in place, on April 23, 2024, I voted for this legislation to provide Ukraine with the resources it needs to defeat Vladimir Putin. President Biden swiftly signed the bill into law on April 24, 2024 so that Ukraine could begin receiving aid this week.   The violence and loss of innocent lives in Israel and Gaza is heartbreaking. Leaders in the region and around the world need to jointly call for this war to end and to put in place a process to achieve a two-state solution. I agree with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in our country’s history, that both Palestinian President Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are barriers to lasting peace in the region, and that new leadership will be essential to lasting peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.  Again, thank you for contacting me. If you would like to stay in touch with me on this or other issues of importance to you, please visit my website at: http://www.hirono.senate.gov. Please do not hesitate to contact me again in the future if I may be of assistance to you in any way. Aloha, Mazie K. Hirono United States Senator OK, I've had my say and I'm hoping and praying for peace. POSTSCRIPT: My daughter in Illinois sent an article showing me how students at Northwestern University were also staging a protest against Israel's attacks in Gaza. This is sounding like the student protests across the country during the Vietnam war when I was in college.

Finding Money Everywhere

Art goes for a morning run every Saturday and often finds a penny, nickel or dime. He never finds anything bigger. Well, there was that one time he found a quarter.

But THIS time he actually found a bill. It was a $1.00 bill. He could hardly believe it!

"Did you look around?" I asked him. "What if there was a $5.00 or $10.00 bill?"

"No," he said. "Then I'd feel bad and would have to look for the owner. Remember the times you found money?"

So true. 

And both times, it happened during our trips in 2018. 

We were on a Viking river cruise excursion in May, 2018 and was one of the last people to leave the bus before reboarding the ship. I'd noticed a rolled up bill on the floor of one of the seats.

I was surprised to see it was a 50 Euro bill. That's about $60! By the time I got off the bus, everyone was scattered and already on the boat.

I took the bill to the program director and told him which bus and approximately where I found it. He promised to mention it when we were all gathered. He didn't. When I  questioned him later, he said he would add it to the staff tips. I still don't understand why he couldn't have just mentioned it on the intercom, but he said there would be too many people then coming to claim it. I just felt bad for the person who lost such a rather large amount of cash.

And then in November of that year we were on a tour in Japan. 

Would you believe that while buying a peach soft serve I found 11,000 yen?

No kidding! That's about $110!

So what to do.

I wondered if there was a Lost and Found. The Japanese tend to be extremely honest, and in the end I gave it to our tour guide who ran back to the area and said the police was called.

I felt good about that.

Whatever the case, whenever we find money we always add it to our Charity jar which Art donates. 

I have to tell you that since 2018, I have not found any money during our trips. I'll keep looking though. 😂

Battling the Birds Again

This time it's the mynahs.

Pigeons (hoards of them) on our roof had been a problem that we'd been battling for quite a while. First, they were building nests under our solar panels and pooping on top of them, blocking the absorption of solar energy. We had to have the panels cleaned and bird netting placed around them.

The pigeons still kept coming so Art had to resort to shooting tiny ice pellets onto the roof to scare them away whenever they came back.

We had been getting a lot of very annoying, very itchy bird mite bites.

After a while the pigeons stopped coming quite as often. Now they just come to scout the roof area and fly off if they see us.

The doves still made nests under several of our eaves. This was in 2021. Sooo... Art drilled in these bird deterrent spikes. And the doves stopped coming.

Would you believe, now it's the mynahs?

Why? How? 

Mynahs are rather large birds. Why would you want to build a nest over spikes? Art had to go up the ladder to remove the nesting material while the mynahs watched from our neighbor's roof.

There was a LOT of garbage packed in that small space.

Unfortunately, later that evening Art discovered he'd gotten three very itchy, annoying bird mite bites on his neck, shoulder and under his arm.

And so the battle of the birds continue. 😬 

I Have a Fatty Tumor?

It's scary that there's so much cancer everywhere now. We have several friends who are battling this horrible disease and it's making me paranoid.

I'd been noticing this lump that I thought was created by my bra strap pushing down on my left shoulder. But then, it seemed to grow and my right shoulder didn't have that same lump. When I pressed on the lump, it felt like a hard boiled egg rolling around under my skin.

After several months of it not going away, I went to see our doctor. I really like Dr. Payne and his name always makes me smile.

He felt my shoulder and said it was a lipoma. Well that didn't sound great either. However, he felt it wasn't anything to worry about. I asked if this was an old-people thing, but he assured me that you can get it at any age. Whatever the case, he sent me to get an ultrasound on it.

Meanwhile I looked up what a lipoma was. According to WebMD:

A lipoma is a lump of fat that grows in your body's soft tissues. Though it's classified as a tumor, it's usually harmless.

OK, so it's a fatty tumor.

When I went to Radiology to get the ultrasound done, the technician told me she does a lot of checks on these fatty tumors. She also said it can be cut out. 

Uuuummm... cut out?  

The technician told me results would be posted the following day and sure enough, Dr. Payne sent a message to me saying it was a "benign lipoma."

When I mentioned this to a friend, she said she had it on her arm too. And by golly, it felt just like mine!

So what else can I expect on this aging journey?

Shoe Goo Rescue

I noticed lately that my walking shoes had felt rather loose. And then it felt really, really loose.

It was still a surprise when the top completely separated from the rubber sole. Sheesh! It's not like this is a cheap pair of shoes either.

It's a New Balance and is one of our favorite shoe brands. 

"Not to worry," said Art. "I still have some Shoe Goo."

"How old is it?" I asked dubiously. 😳

"Don't know," he said. "I'm sure it will still work." 

Well... He kludged together strings and supermarket vegetable ties and fastened the parts together after slathering the Shoe Goo as smoothly as he could on the surfaces.

After a couple of days, I was able to wear it to the market. 

Will they hold? I don't know but so far so good. 

We've brought Shoe Goo with us on our travels and have had to use it on my shoes once and once on another tour member's shoes. I guess you can never tell when your shoes will fall apart. I don't recall having this problem when we lived in Chicago. Could it be the salt air in Hawaii?

Anyway, it's just one more item in our arsenal of travel tools.

Is there anything you like to bring on your travels?

POSTSCRIPT:

Oh darn! I was on a walk with a friend and another part of the shoe came apart. Sheesh! Art insisted I just get another pair. 

Oh well...

Never Giving Up

Hawaiiantel is our Internet/phone/TV service. They apparently did some maintenance work overnight and warned us that we MIGHT lose our WiFi connections. 

(I actually wrote a blog post about this last month and it somehow disappeared so I'm having to rewrite it.)

Anyway... when we woke up the following morning... sure enough. No Internet. No TV. So Art followed the email directions and unplugged and replugged the whatchamacalit. Nope. Still nothing.

So Art called Hawaiiantel and spoke to a Karen. She said to look for the Alcatel Lucent Nokia flat white box which is about 5x7 in size. It turned out that it is over the garage crawlspace. Art was supposed to pull out the power cord for 10 seconds and then replug it. She said we should not touch the Fiber cord. No idea what that would be. 

In case we were unable to figure it out, she was sending out a technician the following day to do it for us. If we managed to do it, we could cancel the technician visit.

Okaaay... 

Art got the ladder and climbed up into the crawlspace over the garage. I followed after him.

Good gosh! There were lots and lots of wires and these three boxes. Don't know if there were more boxes on the other side. I know our techie son-in-law installed a whatchamacalit in this crawl space for cameras he set up around the perimeter of the house too. Anyway, suffice to say there were lots of boxes, thingamajigs, wires, plugs, etc. Ack!

"Shouldn't you just leave it for the technician tomorrow?" I asked.

"Huuuummph...." he said.

"You can't even know which plug it is." I informed him.

"Ummmhmmmhhh," he answered.

"What if you make a mistake and pull out the fiber cord? Didn't Karen say you were not to pull out the fiber cord?"

"Ummmmh..." he said... while never looking up and continuing to trace the wires to the different outlets.

It's true that he's an electrical engineer, but he's always told me that's different from an electrician.

I finally gave up and went into the house since I had the feeling he wasn't paying attention to me.

About 20 minutes later he came back to my office and said, "Turn on your computer." 

Bingo! It was working. He turned on the TV. It was working.

Yup. Everything was working. As he left my office, I swear he was wearing a bit of a smug smile. 😏

Would You Drink It?

We were having our morning walk when Art spotted something in the grass alongside the road.

I did not see anything because it was a little dark and kept walking. When I realized Art wasn't alongside me, I turned around and saw him walking toward me carrying something in both his hands.

Would you believe he'd spotted these two Heineken beer bottles?

"Look," he said. "They're not even opened."

Why would anyone drop beer alongside the road unopened?

"You're not planning to drink it, are you?" I asked. 😏

"I guess not," he answered.

He drained the bottles when we got home and put the bottles in the recycle bin.

Would you drink it?

Partial Solar Eclipse in Hawaii

OK... We weren't able to fly to Illinois for the total solar eclipse this time. Sigh... Yes, we were rather disappointed.

However, Hawaii was supposed to get 20 - 30%. So were we going to mope about it? Of course not. We'll play with what we got.

The first thing was to plan how we could experience it... a little. I didn't have our eclipse viewing lens from 1991 because I'd mailed it to our daughter and family in Chicago. I then heard that you shouldn't use old eclipse glasses because it probably deteriorated. Ummm... I guess 30 year old eclipse lens might be too old.

Anyway, Tiffany was able to get new viewing glasses from the public library.

So what should we do? Art had read that fanning your fingers over each other would give you spaces from which you could see a shadow of the eclipse. I remembered how we saw the eclipse patterns in Kona (1991) and Missouri (2017) on the ground as light filtered down from the leaves on the trees. So I punched holes in a sheet of paper and tested it out. Meh! Not great...

Meanwhile I explained to mom about how we were going to experience the eclipse. I asked her how you say eclipse in Japanese.

Interesting...

I guess "eating the day" would make sense.

Our next step was to punch holes in the paperboard of a cereal box that we happened to have.  

At a little past 7:12 AM, we saw the moon covering about 20% of the sun.

This was fun. 

I texted our daughter who texted our son-in-law to ask if he might have time to take a photo while wearing the new eclipse glasses that Tif got and covering his cellphone camera lens using the old eclipse viewing cards we'd sent them.

He kindly texted me a couple of photos. This is probably close to that 92% they were promised in Chicago.

Tiffany sent me several photos from her office in a rather high building. She took a photo of people who were already waiting in the parking lot for the eclipse to begin.

She couldn't take a good photo of the eclipse itself because she only had her new eclipse glasses and nothing to put over her iPhone lens.

Tif says there were some people out there who were expecting totality and were upset that there was all this hype and they didn't experience total darkness.

Ah well... 😏

On her way back to work, she stopped to take this photo of eclipse patterns on the stairs for me. You can see just how close to totality Chicago was. 

Blogger Cathy in Australia said there would be another total solar eclipse on July 22, 2028 in Australia. Maybe we can see that one? 😂😁

Technology Aggravation

Mom loves to watch a Japanese network called TVJapan. She counts on it for news and entertainment. We paid a subscription of $24.99 each month with Hawaiiantel for the extra TV program.

But then mom was hearing and panicking every day in March that TVJapan was ending. She does not understand English very well and with her worsening dementia, there's no way she could adapt to watching English programming.

What to do? What to do? I called Hawaiiantel and asked if they'd have some other Japanese language programming available and was told that wasn't planned and nothing else would be available.

Arrrghhh....

But then we heard that you could subscribe to a streaming service called Jme for $25 a month. Unfortunately, the WiFi signal to mom's family room is extremely weak since it's so far from my modem.

Arrrrgghhh...

That necessitated a call to our techie son-in-law.

He ordered a Firestick and a WiFi extender for us. After a lot of trouble and patient kindness from our favorite techie, mom's TV got a good strong signal so she'd be able to watch TVJapan through the Jme streaming service.

The downside was she couldn't operate the remotes on her own. It was too confusing so any time she wanted to watch a program she'd have to call us.

There was an offer for a month of free Jme streaming until April 30th so we could test it out before actually subscribing. 

Meanwhile, our Japanese relatives here in Hawaii offered to help set up the streaming service once we subscribed. They also mentioned how the Japanese Cultural Center was having people who weren't familiar with the technology come to learn about subscribing to Jme.

We decided to wait.

It wasn't ideal, but it couldn't be helped.

AND THEN...

We got this message!

Seriously????

After all the trouble we went through to set up Jme?

Seriously????

What the heck...

It was the best possible outcome for mom and she never noticed the difference between TVJapan and Nippon TV.

But then my cousin emailed me that her mom who was also from Japan said two of her friends subscribed and paid the yearly subscription to Jme for $300 only to discovered that their TV was too old or they didn't have WiFi and they couldn't get their money back.

What a fiasco! 

I wasn't happy about having paid $100 for the extra Firestick and WiFi extender, but gosh... at least we didn't pay $300.

Phew!

Caring for a senior is not easy.

Wait... I'm a senior.

Missing the Eclipse

One of the most exciting moments we've experienced as a family was to fly to the Big Island in Hawaii from Chicago on July 10th, 1991 to see the total solar eclipse in Kona. We were completely surprised and touched when the flight attendant brought a big bottle of champagne for us to take with us saying she was impressed with our wonderful family. Gosh... 

When we arrived on the Big Island, we found that the Budget rental car we had reserved was not available because too many people had come to see the eclipse.

We were disappointed because we'd planned to drive to Waikoloa which was recommended as one of the prime spots to view the eclipse.

Ah well... we got up early the following morning and decided to just walk to the pier and view the eclipse from Kona.

However, it turned out to be one of the BEST places to view the eclipse. Waikoloa had clouded over along with Mauna Kea where the astronomers had gone. Totality was actually almost directly over Kona.

It was an amazing experience! Tiffany and Keola loved seeing the bright morning light go dim and then turn to night again. We saw a sparkling, red corona when it reached totality and lasted an incredible 6 minutes 53 seconds.

Birds stopped singing and went to sleep. Crickets began to chirp.

I just saw this in my 1991 journal: "This was the greatest show "off Earth" that I have ever seen. It can be best described as a sparkling diamond studded anniversary ring with specks of rubies and opals on it. Perhaps we can get together in 2017 in North Carolina to see the next one."

And then the sun slowly came out again leaving crescent shadows on the ground.

We were therefore excited when we learned that there would be another total solar eclipse close to Chicago on August 21, 2017. (We had KC decorate her glasses with a protective paper plate shield. We'd read that children should have more protection in case the glasses shifted.) Art insisted we needed to fly to Illinois to see this historic event.

We then drove to St. Louis, Missouri and watched the awesome total solar eclipse with our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. 

Scientists had already predicted that the next total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024 would pass over Indiana. 

"Expect us to come and visit you again on April 8th, 2024," said Art.

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, we'll be in Illinois in May and then again in August. We really couldn't make another trip to Illinois in April.

Sigh...

Poor Art. He was very disappointed... very, very disappointed.

On top of all this, our daughter said they would miss it too. Our granddaughter could not afford to miss classes on April 8th. Our son-in-law couldn't take the day off from his job. Our daughter was also working. 

Sigh...

I recently saw a box of our souvenirs from July 10, 1991 and in it, I found our eclipse viewing cards.

Wouldn't Tif and family like to have it? I told Tif that Chicago's viewing would begin at 12:51 and peak viewing would be around 2:07 PM. Their eclipse will be about 94%. (I found this map on the NASA website.)

"Yes!" she said. 😀 So I packed the eclipse viewers and immediately sent them to her.

Well, I guess Art will just have to experience this vicariously.

Are you in the path of the eclipse? Do you have your eclipse glasses ready?

POSTSCRIPT:

After Tiffany received the viewing cards I'd sent, she discovered that the Public Library was giving eclipse viewing glasses out for free. She was able to get three of them. They are now totally ready for the Great North American Eclipse. 

Sigh... I'll be looking forward to seeing photos of what you all see... safely.

Making Ice Cubes and the Titanic?

I was looking for something to write about while I was taking the ice tray out of the freezer. I've had this silly goal lately to see how big I can make those ice cubes. I'd found that bigger ice cubes will melt more slowly in our Thermos during the day than a bunch of smaller cubes. The trick is to see how much water I can put in the tray without spilling it when I stick it back in the freezer.

Well, this time I just had to show Art what my accomplishment for the day produced.

Isn't it amazing?

I just think it's awesome how water will expand out of its compartments when it turns to ice.

I got this from the Dutton Institute.

"Water expands when it freezes making it less dense than the water from which it freezes. In fact, its volume is a little over 9% greater (or density ca. 9% lower) than in the liquid state. For this reason, ice floats on the water (like an ice cube in a glass of water)."

Wow! It's incredible to think it becomes less dense when frozen and floats in water. 

Gee... I thought. This is so interesting. So it's hard, but it's less dense? And it floats?

I turned to Art and told him, "Did you know that ice would float in a glass of water?"

He burst out laughing. 

When he could catch a breath, he said, "Titanic?"

"Titanic?" I asked.

"Icebergs?" he laughed.

🙄

How embarrassing....

"Please don't tell anybody that you asked me that," he said while still laughing. 

Ahhh well... I'm telling you. I'd better stop writing blog posts for today. I think my brain stopped working.

POSTSCRIPT: 

Uh oh... he just came back to tell me, "And did you know that fresh water will float over salt water because salt water is denser? That makes icebergs float even more so."

I'm leeeeaving.....

Protection From Ground Termites

Three months ago we had a terrible scare when we discovered termite poop in our kitchen. With help from our neighbor, friend and my brother, we had to take out a huge kitchen cabinet unit and take it to be fumigated.

We then had a termite inspector named Stacy come out and check out whether there might be more infestations. Stacy said our cabinet unit was being eaten by drywood termites that eat slowly.

HOWEVER, she said ground termites eat fast and eat a LOT. She advised us not to plant anything close to the house because our watering it would cause ground termites to sniff out the water and then eat the house for dessert. She also advised us to have Aloha Termite and Pest Control come out and inject Termidor around the perimeter of our house to keep the termites out.

Because it was the rainy season in Hawaii, we opted to wait until the end of March to have this done. When the day came for the guys to come and do the job... yup... it rained... a lot. It was therefore rescheduled for the following week.

A friendly Ivan and his partner arrived on time and began drilling holes in the concrete around the house. The tiny holes were about a half inch in diameter.

Ivan then shot Termidor which is a poison that kills termites, carpenter ants, cockroaches and a variety of other insects into the hole and perimeter of the house.

His partner then followed behind with a masonry patch for each hole.

We were told that this should be done every 5 years. However, I looked online and it says it can provide protection for up to 10 years. 

We've lived here for 15 years and haven't had a problem with ground termites.

Fingers crossed we now won't have a problem for 15 more.

Letting the Younger Generation Take Over

I used to stress over our family parties. Because we're the only ones who have a bit more space (not to mention street parking) to handle the get-togethers, it needs to be at our house. We've always felt it was important for us to have these ohana (Hawaiian word for family) parties. It would be sad to lose our connections to each other.

It was OK 10 years ago. Mom loved making her "famous" macaroni salad. Art and I were happily exhausting ourselves providing all kinds of dishes. It was always a pot luck so everybody brought something and there was LOTS of leftovers for everyone to bring home.

But now we're older. Mom has forgotten how to make any of her signature dishes. And I've felt like we were running around crazy all evening during the party making sure everyone had their drinks, getting the food set up, passing out leftover containers for everyone, getting the desserts passed out, taking coffee/mocha orders, etc. not to mention cleaning up afterwards. We were exhausted by the end of the evening.

That's when our daughter (who lives in Chicago) told us to stop killing ourselves and just buy some of the food, let younger family members help, etc.

It felt weird to think about letting go of the reins to keep everything running smoothly, BUT we did it for the last few parties. I assigned our nieces to take over a lot of the duties and the nephews joined in the clean up.

It was amazing. And it wasn't necessary for us to kill ourselves preparing so many dishes. The main thing was being together. This photo shows just some of the food that was set out. 

And for our last party which was a combination New Year/St. Patrick's Day celebration, I just marveled how things have changed since we let go of the control. When I started washing a few of the dishes, my nephew laughed and said, "You can go now, Auntie. I'll do it."

It was awesome... absolutely awesome!

And when everyone left, the house was back to normal, dishes were put away and everything was cleaned up. 

Best of all, Art and I had just enjoyed being with all our loved ones.

Wow!

The Monkey Method to Peeling a Banana?

When you're retired you might end up finding weird things to interest you. Art and I are both retired so yes, we do find weird things interesting.

Case in point: Art discovered that if he peeled his banana from the stubby end and not the stem end of the berry there would be a little black pointy nib.  

Yup. Bananas are berries. If you really want to know why they're berries, you can read up on it here.  Like bananas, these fruits all develop from flowers that contain an ovary, a fleshy center, and one or more seeds. This makes them berries - although in fact few people call them that. Berries are a small group of fruits, sweet, fleshy, with seeds inside. Bananas are considered berries and can be called fruit or berry.

Anyway, it got to be a contest between us to see who could get a longer nib.

This was the morning that I won. Check that out! See how long it is? Takes finesse to get that out without breaking it. 😂

At first Art told me it's the correct way to peel a banana and that monkeys do it that way. I'm afraid not. 😂 They're not that dainty. Apparently, they just bite right through the peel.

OK,  so this is how you're supposed to do it from IFL Science:

Holding the stalk in one hand, you can then squeeze the top between your fingers which (when ripe) will easily break apart. You can then peel down the edges of the banana without any awkward bending that could damage and soften the fruit.

You’ll also sometimes be presented the remains of the banana's flower in the form of a small, blackish nib which, if you’re not fond of, can be easily removed before you start eating.

Now you know how to peel a banana.  😁

Sigh... I need to think of something else to write about on Friday.

Chicago Spring?

Judy, one of my Chicago teacher buddies sent a funny explanation of Chicago seasons yesterday. I had to share it with you.

I was chuckling because my daughter texted a video last week showing snow falling. The week before, she'd been happy with 70 degree weather.

Sigh...

Here's what Judy sent me.

Such is life in Chicago.

Wait, they forgot Indian Summer.

And it looks like we might be going to Chicago during Hell's Front Porch.

 Sigh...

POSTSCRIPT:

By the way, we got our additional updated COVID vaccine yesterday at CVS. 

We didn't know about it until our friends told us they'd gotten it.  We had our last updated COVID vaccine in October, 2023. 

This is what I found on the CDC website:

• People aged 65 years and older who received 1 dose of any updated 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax) should receive 1 additional dose of an updated COVID-19 vaccine at least 4 months after the previous updated dose. For more Novavax information, click or tap here.

How to Keep Fresh Flowers Alive Longer

My cousin recently brought over white roses for us to enjoy.

 

He knows that mom loves flowers just as his mother (mom's sister), aunts and grandmother did. 

In fact, our grandmother (my mom's mom) even taught flower arrangement in Japan many, many moons ago. That's her on the right.

Whenever David gives us flowers, I feel it's my duty to make sure they last as long as possible.

I know some instructions my grandmother passed down to my mother was to cut the stems at an angle before putting it in a vase and to change the water daily in Hawaii where it's warm and bacteria can grow faster in the water.

The reason I started thinking about flower longevity was this cartoon I saw in the newspaper. I looked this up, but still don't know how true this is. Whatever the facts, I do take out wilted flowers anyway.

I found this website that gave a lot of good advice on keeping your flowers fresh longer. Love-n Fresh Flowers  

I thought I'd outline the highlights.

1. Change the water every two days. Like I said, I do this every day. I also don't fill the water too high because I figure it will just cause more bacteria to grow on the stems, but that's just me. I've seen some websites saying to fill the vase 2/3 high.

2. Trim about half an inch off the stems before you put them in a vase and every time you change the water. I keep the stems long when I first put them in a vase and move them to a shorter vase as the stems get shorter every time I trim them.

3. Keep the flowers away from heat and light. Yup. Definitely.

4. Avoid putting your flowers next to ripening fruit or vegetables like bananas and apples because they give off an invisible gas called ethylene. (I didn't know this.)

5. After your last arrangement, you should wash your vase thoroughly with hot soapy water or the dishwasher because the bacteria apparently does not go away. Oops! (Didn't know this either.)

6. Use the flower food that often comes with your bouquet.

7. Use a sharp scissors when cutting the stems so you don't damage the cells/tissue by smashing the stems. I actually use a sharp knife like my mom showed me and I slice it at an angle.

OK... I guess that about does it for me. I have to go wash the vases I used now.

Almost Frozen Shoulder

I had my first case of frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) over 20 years ago. I was still teaching and was experiencing right shoulder pain. (It was the result of doing some exercises with dumbbells.) When I called the Humana Nurse Helpline, she told me that I should rest and immobilize my arms. 

Unfortunately, that caused my first case of adhesive capsulitis. I had to go through 9 months of painful physical therapy to get my arm usable again. It was probably difficult for my students to read what I was writing on the blackboard since everything was now at my chest level. I got this diagram from the Mayo Clinic website.

In 2013, I don't know what I was doing but I was back at physical therapy for shoulder pain. At least this time I knew better than to immobilize my arms thinking it would heal. 

In 2020, I was working on scraping, plastering, sanding and painting our son's kitchen walls in Maryland with Art and BINGO! Shoulder pain again! I took Motrin which didn't alleviate the pain enough so I emailed my doctor at Tripler. She advised me to add Tylenol since it's a different class of drug. Anyway, I was able to keep moving my arm and I was able to cure myself.

And THIS TIME, as I wrote earlier, I was cleaning the tile grout using a toothbrush, baking soda and Dawn dishwashing liquid which caused my arm to start hurting a few days later. 

I had learned my lesson well from the past experiences and took Aleve while continuing to move my arm.

The Shoulder-73 exercise was especially valuable for me. 

I'd kept this sheet of exercises I'd gotten from the physical therapist.

I've got my shoulder mobility back now and am so grateful to my kind and knowledgeable physical therapists who have helped me throughout the years.

Contractor Art?

This is very goofy and I don't know how we can correct this. One of Art's cousins who we actually don't often see, recently wanted to call and thank us in response to a sympathy card we'd sent. She remarked that it brought her to the edge of tears because not many people actually take the time to write a personal message in a sympathy card these days. I have to say it is always one of the most difficult cards to write.

She didn't have our phone number so she looked it up online and said there were a lot of people with his name. Art laughed and told her it was all him. He's the only one in the U.S. with his name.

After their loving conversation, I thought I'd look up Art's name and was surprised to see this Linkedin website.

What the heck?!?

Let me make this clear.

Art is NOT an Independent Construction Professional!

I don't know how we can contact them to take this off their website.

OK, it's true Art has done a lot of construction work on our house.

This was in Illinois. 

We had the construction company put up the shell for an addition to our 3 bedroom home. They added a family room, a master bedroom and bathroom on top.

It took Art (I helped along with many, many awesome friends) about 7 years to finish the project on nights and weekends.

And then he added a deck that skunks and racoons liked to live under. 😏

And when we moved to Hawaii, we again hired a contractor to build a shell and it took Art (with many family members, friends, and me) another 5 years to complete.

Wait... hey...

Maybe he IS an independent construction (in his opinion) professional. 😂