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.

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.