Preparing for 2021

It took a little more effort to get our minds psyched to get ready for the new year. Actually preparing for the new year is a bigger deal for mom than Christmas. 

You have to get your house organized and clean before embarking on another year. I remember mom making my brother and me clean the baseboards with rags and a bucket of water when we were kids. Needless to say, we don't do that anymore. 

However, we do a few things that mom just insists on. She just has to make her signature macaroni salad. 

It's a very complicated dish. I was her sous chef in charge of bringing her ingredients, peeling and grating carrots and garlic, peeling eggs, etc. Oh... and washing a lot of pots, pans, bowls, etc. etc.

My brother was more than happy to come over for his share. She was sad that we couldn't all be together to celebrate the new year this time.

Art washed our car and van and got the laundry done. You need clean sheets for the new year.

He also did all our donations for the year. 

I finished our thank you notes for our Christmas gifts.

The job that we really don't enjoy is to clean and organize the 12 year old refrigerator and freezer.

We took out everything in the freezer, itemized and organized it so we know what we have.

We had to defrost the cooling vents in the fridge so it can hang on a bit longer until we get our vaccines and can go shopping again.

We tossed out expired items in the fridge and cupboards.

After I'd made a bunch of dinosaur masks with material I'd bought at Walmart for my grandsons, my daughter, Tiffany surprised me with MORE dinosaur fabric 😆 and thread at Christmas so I could sew masks for her nephews. 

It was meant to be a surprise to keep me occupied during the lock-down. Tif was rather dismayed when I told her what I'd purchased at Walmart after she'd already bought the fabric and had mailed it to me for Christmas.

It doesn't matter. My son says JD and RK will be thrilled. They LOVE dinosaurs! If they don't grow up to be paleontologists, I'd be surprised.

(I know. I know. I didn't have to work so hard to finish the masks, but I had a flat rate box ready to go off to Maryland so I wanted to get them done and out to the post office before the new year. Yes, it's true. I can be crazy sometimes.)

I now need to cut our hair.

One thing we are actually hoping for is a little rain on New Years Eve. The illegal fireworks in Hawaiian neighborhoods are absolutely nuts these days. As if the almost professional-like aerials weren't bad enough (though quite stunning), those concussion type firecracker bombs that make car alarms go off are horrible!

So yes, a little rain would be nice. 😁

Happy New Year, everybody!

A Cover for My Mixer

I bought a stand mixer a few years ago. Or maybe Art bought it for me as a Christmas gift. I can't remember. To be honest, I only use it for preparing a (very) few baked items. Still, it IS quite convenient. 

The only problem is that it's heavy. And the older I get, the heavier it gets. I know I can call Art to carry it out of our cabinet for me, but I'd prefer being able to access it myself.

Art, mom, relatives and some friends do love getting these baked items so I really enjoy making them. However, for the holiday season when there's more baking to do, I decided to leave the mixer on the counter. That meant I wanted to cover it to keep the dust off.

I measured it first but wasn't confident that I could come up with a pattern to fit around it perfectly. 

Right now, I only have dinosaur material available (grandsons' masks) and I don't have the luxury to make mistakes cutting fabric.

Therefore I got a paper bag and cut it to fit the mixer in order to create a pattern.

I looked at my fabric shelf and found this material that my daughter sent me a while ago to make masks. I had discovered that it was actually 50% polyester and 50% cotton so I didn't use it. I prefer using 100% cotton for masks.

Anyway, I’d set it aside and wouldn't you know it was just enough fabric to make this mixer cover!

I'm so happy.

And now I'm off to make those dinosaur masks for my grandsons. I don't know why my teenage granddaughter doesn't want one. 😁

Sign of the Times

The Star Advertiser prints a daily photo from the past. This showed the contestants for the Miss Hawaii pageant in 1964. Gee... I was in high school then.

I imagine if I saw this then, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. Perhaps only Caucasians were thought beautiful enough to compete in a beauty pageant? They sure didn't look like the local people I was surrounded by.

I wondered what it's like now and saw this.

It's a little more inclusive now I see. 

This is good. I would love for our young local girls living in Hawaii to feel they are all pretty.

A Future Picasso?

We've always kept artwork that my granddaughter, KC draws framed in my office. Every so often she would replace it with another one through the years. I would have special paper cut to size for her that would fit in the frame. 

When my grandson, JD was about 2 years old I had him draw a picture for his frame too.

Whenever I passed by the drawing it would make me smile.

However, I never got around to having him draw another one.

When he turned 4, he started drawing more but then there was the pandemic. 

Our son and daughter-in-law posted photos of dinosaurs, portraits, etc. that JD had been doing. 

It would be hard to get a drawing to Hawaii from Maryland that wouldn't get wrinkled or squashed.

But then I had this idea! 😃 I figured I could download the posted photo of the drawing that 5 year old JD did, put it on Photoshop, scale it to fit my frame and have it developed at Walmart on matt paper. It cost $6.14 for an 11 x 14 enlargement.

The picture turned out perfectly. You wouldn't know it was a photo. That big black creature in the middle is Mungo, my granddog.

At first I thought JD drew Mungo much, much too big, but then from his perspective this must be how he sees their dog.

It's all done now. There's KC's drawing that she did last year up on the wall and now I have JD's updated drawing. I'm going to have to ask Keola and Sarah to have 3 year old RK do a drawing next so I can put that up too next to his brother's.

I sent a photo of the framed drawing to Keola who showed it to JD. I got a text back from Keola saying, "JD is very proud."

And Grandma is very happy.

Christmas Trees Past and Present

 I was feeling a bit nostalgic as I looked back at Christmas photos past and present.

1972 is the year before Art and I were married. That's Art and my brother, Dennis trimming our tree in Hawaii. This is before we moved to Chicago. The needles of the evergreen look pretty skimpy. Could it be because of the long boat ride to Hawaii? 

1975 was a huge year of change and it looks like a fatter tree. We had moved to Chicago and our daughter, Tiffany was born.

In 1976 Tiffany was getting into things so we opted to just decorate our little palm tree. The palm tree remained our holiday tree or quite a few years, especially when Keola was born in 1978. 

I remember the year a friend named Terry brought over gingerbread cookie ornaments. We hung them around the tree. However, the humidity in the house eventually caused the cookies to become softer and fall. The kids would sit in front of the tree just waiting for the next one to drop.

1983 is when we got the artificial tree. It was nice not to worry about keeping it watered or having needles fall. I don't think the kids minded so long as there were presents under it.

Too soon, the kids grew up and left home. Tiffany got married. Keola joined the Peace Corps. 

And we bought another artificial tree in 2009 after moving to Hawaii to take care of mom after my father passed away. 

We moved the location of our tree in 2013. However to prepare for our son's visit with little JD in 2016, we bought a tinier artificial tree in case he might decide to play with it. Sure enough he did and caused the tree to topple over with its unbreakable ornaments. That was quite a surprise for him.

And this year, we're finding we like that little tree a lot. We've gotten lazy. It's a lot easier to set up and take down. The magic of the holidays is not really in the size of the tree or the amount of presents you get (a lot of those presents you see under that tree this year were actually those that we gave away), it's in the love you share with everyone.

Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, everybody!

Almost Done With the Advent Calendar!

My daughter knows that her grandmother does enjoy a spot of liquor every now and then. Mom and her family (mother, father, siblings) are not affected by Asian flush. I've inherited that immunity too. I don't turn red like Art does. Art avoids liquor because he's learned that it's really not good for him.

I got this from Wikipedia:

Alcohol flush reaction (AFR) is a condition in which a person develops flushes or blotches associated with erythema on the face, neck, shoulders, and in some cases, the entire body after consuming alcoholic beverages. The reaction is the result of an accumulation of acetaldehyde, a metabolic byproduct of the catabolic metabolism of alcohol, and is caused by an aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 deficiency.

This syndrome has been associated with lower than average rates of alcoholism, possibly due to its association with adverse effects after drinking alcohol. However, it has also been associated with an increased risk of esophageal cancer in those who do drink.

I believe our kids have inherited that condition too so they avoid alcohol as well. 

As a special treat, Tiffany decided to get her grandmother an Advent calendar with little chocolates that were supposed to have some alcohol in them. (I wrote how Tif was carded at Trader Joe's). 😆 

Mom loved it. She'd never heard of an Advent calendar so I had to explain it to her.

She said she couldn't really taste the alcohol. Uuuummm... the chocolate candy bonbons are pretty tiny. I think she was expecting a gush of alcohol. 🤣

Whatever the case, tomorrow will be her last cocktail bonbon from the Advent calendar.

Not to worry.

We're giving her a box of those teeny chocolate alcohol candies from Costco so she can keep having one a day.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

My Helpful Friend, Alexa

One of the great reasons I love to blog is that I learn so much from my blogging family. One wonderful thing I recently learned from John of The AC is On is about another special way Alexa can help you.

Alexa (Amazon's Echo Dot) is sort of like the iPhone's Siri. She answers questions or she'll tell you she doesn't know.

Alexa is synced with the Amazon Alexa app on our iPhones or would be on your Android phones as well.

John mentioned how he no longer has to write down his shopping list. He can just tell Alexa throughout the day to put milk or sugar or whatever on his list and Alexa would do just that. Then John can just carry his phone with him to the grocery store and check them off his Alexa made list. 

This was so intriguing to me.

My problem is that I have multiple shopping lists tacked to the fridge for all the places where I need a particular thing. Sometimes, I'm upstairs and those lists are downstairs. Luckily, I have an Echo Dot in the kitchen (downstairs) and in my office (upstairs) so I can tell Alexa to add something to a particular list from either location.  At the store, I can just check the item off and it's removed to the bottom.

Since I'm wearing a mask at stores these days (and can't automatically turn on my phone with facial recognition), I do have to check the app and write down what I need before I go into the store, but that's totally OK with me.

John also mentioned reminders so I looked that up. Art and I usually set timers to our phones to remind us to put some food in the fridge that we'd set out to cool.

Now I've discovered that I can tell Alexa to remind me to do anything and she'll pleasantly tell me to bring in the wash or call somebody or put something in the fridge or whatever at the correct time. It's amazing! And in case I don't listen to her, the message is also going to my phone. It might even be going to my watch, but I can't remember.

And yes, remembering is a problem for me. Granted, my daughter has told me that I've always been somewhat forgetful unlike her elephant brain (Elephants never forget, right?). Never cross her, because she'll forgive but she won't forget. 

And now, here's my question. If I rely on Alexa to do all my remembering for me, will that make my brain atrophy? Hmmm...

"Christmas Star"

We and many of our friends have been fascinated with the idea of the "Christmas Star" that happened last night on the Winter Solstice. It's not really one star but two planets, Jupiter and Saturn. Apparently they've not been so close together at night for 800 years in 1226. 

Well, just the idea that it's been 800 years was motivation enough to get us to pay attention.

Our friends out in Mililani sent our text group of friends this photo.

We loved seeing the silhouettes of the palm and papaya trees in the foreground.

Art got our tripod ready, dusted off my Canon camera, zoomed the lens and we got this shot. Doesn't Saturn look reddish? It's farther away from the Earth. Not quite as interesting without a foreground though.

And then we got this photo from our friend who has a friend on the Big Island who was at the crater of Halemaumau. Kilauea was erupting yesterday.

I texted our friend Dave, the master photographer and he sent this photo saying it was his contribution. 

I thought he meant those two stars on the right hand corner.

But no, he was just joking. That's an illustration of Jupiter with Saturn in the back of it. 

Were you able to see the planets? They'll be there tonight, but you'll have to check what time is best in your area. Good luck! 

Mom's Glasses Problem

I wear reading glasses. I do have a separate pair of glasses for distance, but generally don't use it since the doctor says I can do without them. Art wears glasses all the time and has no problem with them.

Last year, mom's prescription changed so we took her to Sam's Club to get new glasses. We had such a huge problem fitting them. We'd take her in and they'd adjust it. She'd say they fit well and we'd go home. The next day, she'd complain that they don't stay on her nose and keeps slipping down. So we'd take her back in and the same thing would happen. 

After the third time of going to Sam's and still having her glasses slip down, I remembered my granddaughter using these holders when she went to the dance studio.

I bought them on Amazon and put them on her glasses. They were OK for a day, but then she said it was too tight.

Eventually, she would interchange her glasses with the old prescription pair half the time but she said things were blurry.

And then one day, mom said her glasses BROKE! 

Art examined them and said the screw had rusted, snapped and were embedded in the screw holes. It couldn't be removed.

I'd never heard of this happening.

I called Sam's Club and the optician checked the files and said the warranty was only for 1 year and it was 1 month past. 

Seriously?

Sigh.

However, she took pity on me and said I could bring the glasses in without mom and she would see what she could do to repair it.

When I brought mom's glasses in, the optician said she could see the rust on the inside of the frame as well. I told her that mom is outside in the morning and she does sweat in the sun. The optician said that mom needed to wash her glasses everytime she sweat while wearing them. Art says he always washes his glasses after his runs.

The Optician (I wish I could remember her name) took pity on 91 year old mom and got the identical pair of glasses from the display and transferred the lens from the broken pair to the display pair. 

She then worked hard to match the fit so we could avoid the danger of bringing mom in for the fitting.

Incredibly, they fit! Mom says they stay on her nose just fine!

We haven't heard a single complaint. 

Absolutely amazing! 

I'd asked the optician where I could write a review for her wonderful work and she gave me an email that I could write to.

And yes, I wrote a glowing, grateful review as soon as I got home.

What a relief!

Two Projects in One Day! (Part 2)

Art's big joke about all his home maintenance projects is that it always takes 3 times longer than he thought it would. Sometimes even 5 times longer. He just doesn't like to give up.

OK, now that he'd gotten the part he needed in the morning, he  decided to start on the leaky faucet project right away. That was a surprise. I thought he'd wait for the next day to get an earlier start. 

I was upstairs thinking it was going to take all day.

But no... He was done in maybe an hour. That's the broken cartridge he needed to replace in the middle photo. He put a piece of newsprint by the handle to make sure he'd fixed the leak. 

Buoyed by the success of the faucet project, he started on the screen project. And it wasn't even lunch time yet! This was totally amazing.

You can see where he'd just duct taped the screen frames together, but it caused a space where mosquitoes could come through. Granted, I haven't had a mosquito problem in a while. This is weird. I wonder if the clouds of gazillion finches we have in the islands now eat mosquitoes. 

Uh oh... going off on a tangent again.

Anyway, Art laid out all his supplies to put the screens together.

And went straight to work.

Yes, it's true we had to delay dinner by a few minutes, but he finished!

This has got to be a record.

So what else could I ask him to do?

Trip to Home Depot at an Ungodly Hour (Part 1)

Maybe it's just because the year is ending that Art decided to take care of our leaking faucet in the kitchen and the deteriorating window screens as well.

I guess we'd just been avoiding going out to the hardware store.

Well, Art really did need to get that faucet fixed. There was no question on that.

Going to Home Depot required some planning. The store is always crowded with contractors or people like us fixing breaking parts of our homes. 

We first checked the operating hours. They open at 5 AM! Seriously! We also checked the people traffic at the stores.

So yes, we got up EARLY and headed out the door. The store was empty at 5 AM.

They had hand sanitizers, wipes to disinfect the cart and even masks. We had our own so no need to use theirs.

We found the parts needed to build screens and parts to fix the faucet leak.

I asked Art what other people did to fix their screens. They all deteriorate with Hawaii's salt air and are not warrantied.

He said, "Oh, the store will build screens for you or you can hire a contractor to do it."

"Uuum... really? Then why don't we have these professionals at the store do it for us?" I asked.

"Where's the fun in that?" he answered.

🙄

As we were leaving the store I saw the Christmas tree they had set up filled with gift cards and small tools.

POSTSCRIPT:

Granted, the faucet cartridge he needed did not fit and Home Depot didn't have the correct one so that did necessitate a trip back to return it and we had to go to City Mill to get the correct part. Luckily, the stores were still not very crowded.

Washer Cover Experiment

Our washer and dryer has to stay on our patio. No, it's can't be enclosed. There's not enough space. Therefore, we have a problem with rust. The Hawaiian air is humid and salty.

Our wonderful friends gave us a couple of these lightweight washer covers, but unfortunately the first one broke within a few months.

I wrote a post about my hopeful idea of polyurethaning the cover to make it more durable. I used up half the can.

Alas! It lasted only 7 months, just a few months longer than the unvarnished one.

The polyurethane just made the material more brittle and in a short time, just crackled apart.

We'd bought a stronger water resistant cover for our dryer from Home Depot a couple of years ago and that has stood the test of time.

However, it's hard to take off and on in that tight space (also something we're not able to fix).

Luckily we usually (almost always) hang our clothes outside to dry.

I looked online and found this water resistant/proof (?) cover. It has a zipper than runs from the top or the bottom so you don't have to take the cover off. 

I looked at the reviews and a few people said the zipper is terrible and can break after 8 months. Other people really liked it. Granted, almost nobody writes reviews a year later so we don't know exactly how good it is.

We shall see.

Lazy Shortcut for Grated Ginger

I'm very lazy in the kitchen. 

My family loves to eat chilled tofu with a sauce of grated ginger and shoyu (soy sauce). Unfortunately, I somehow keep forgetting to grate that ginger root.

One day I had this idea to just spend time grating a bunch of ginger root and freezing it. I looked online to see if it was OK to freeze ginger. Someone recommended putting small mounds of grated ginger on waxed or parchment paper and freezing it.

I did it and then stored the little grated ginger lumps in a jar. Oh happy day! 

Now... all I have to do is take out a lump of frozen grated ginger, add it to shoyu, swirl it around and drizzle it over the tofu squares.

Perfect! 

And if I want to make it even more interesting, I can add some frozen green onions too.

I told you I was lazy.

Christmas?

This isn't a normal holiday season. We didn't get to have family over for Thanksgiving and we're usually visiting our children in Maryland and Illinois around now. Last year we were visiting our son and his family and took a trip to Washington, D.C. to see the Ice Maze at City Center.

Our grandsons loved it. And I have to say it's the first ice maze I've ever walked in.

We then stopped in Illinois for a few days before heading home to Hawaii. 

Missing my children and their spouses, grandchildren and friends who we loved visiting on the mainland and being stuck at home here in Hawaii didn't produce a lot of holiday spirit.

However, our daughter insisted we should put up the tree and carry on.

So we did.

And a funny thing happened.

It actually worked as the memories each ornament invoked nudged our spirits upwards.

Even when mom walks by and looks at the decorations she can't help but smile. I am noticing that there's a lot more Christmas lights as we walk by before the sun comes up in the morning. I have a feeling that everybody is looking for some holiday cheer at this critical time of year.

Cruising on a Princess

 I saw this on Cathy@Still Waters' blog a while ago and it made me laugh.

I have to laugh because I have several of those bags.

We got them last year (seems like a lifetime ago) when we took mom for her final trip to Japan to see her relatives and cruise around the country in April.

We were on the Diamond Princess and had a wonderful time. It was a huge surprise to discover that it was the SAME ship we traveled on when we took the Alaskan Cruise with mom and Auntie Grace in August, 2011. 

One thing that did bother me happened on the day of our disembarkation in Yokohama.

Since it was mom's last big trip, we'd paid a bit more for a larger room and a few other amenities. One of them was to wait in a comfortable location to wait for our turn to leave the ship. There were tables set up with pastries and other snacks along with beverages. 

As we waited our turn to pick up something to eat, I saw an elderly gentleman looking over the bakery selections and cough over them several times.

I took mom's arm and told her we should sit elsewhere and forget picking up anything to eat. I didn't want to take the chance of her getting sick.

One year later, we were surprised to hear that it was the same Diamond Princess where passengers were unable to disembark because of the COVID-19 infections aboard ship.

That was truly a close call. It could have been us. 

Wow!

And Now the Washing Machine Gets Sick!

We do the laundry perhaps every 2-3 days. We do just one load of laundry which gets hung on our clothes line. Mom would do a small load of wash everyday if we let her. However we've convinced her to wait until we have a full load before starting up the washer. 

Well, after 14 years, the washer suddenly stopped spinning and making a horrible grumbling sound. I was not looking forward to hunting for another appliance during a pandemic, but started thinking about looking online to see what I could find.

Art? Nope. He was looking online at YouTubes to see how he might be able to repair it.

"Should be do-able," he said.

He pushed the washing machine backwards and pulled out the part that was indeed broken as instructed on the YouTube video.

He then looked online and found that it was a $2.75 (on the mainland) washer motor coupler. However, if he ordered it to be sent to Hawaii, it would cost $17 for shipping. Seriously?

I was skeptical about this repair work on a 14 year old machine but we have a friend who happens to be a plumber. He told Art that he could find the part at the Reliable Parts store in Mililani where it cost $23. Sigh...

This is what the guts of a washing machine looks like from the bottom looking up.

That motor is extremely heavy. 

Do you see those two clips (below) that hold the motor together after you replace the coupler?

I want you to picture this.

You have to hold up that motor while the other person pushes that clip in place. The YouTuber is somehow able to snap it in place easily. 

I had to lie down in front of Art and hold up that motor while he tried to snap the clip in place.

It would not snap. It's very strong.

Meanwhile I'm almost nauseous in front of him trying to hold that motor up.

Despondent, we gave up.

Well, I gave up. 

We took a break and had lunch. Meanwhile, Art's mind is whirring along.

He decided that drastic measures were called for. He called me out again and we removed the outer covering so the intestines of the machine were more exposed and we would be at a better angle.

This time, he was able to snap the clips in place, get the motor back up again and push the washing machine in place.

We went to bed early that night. There were a few aches and pains, but we recovered OK.

I hope no other machine gets sick while this pandemic is going on.

OH... I forgot to tell you that the machine now does work!