I went to the Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Washington's 8th Annual Tomodachi Luncheon today. My friend Barb has invited me to go for a number of years and now that I am retired I was finally able to attend! Norman Mineta, who was U. S Secretary of Transportation on 9/11, was the recipient of a Tomodachi award. (Don't have a good photo when he came to our table to greet Barb's parents, it was backlit and you can't really see anything.) Lunch was a salmon caesar salad; there were 2 desserts: one with mango bits and the other with matcha (they are hidden by the programs).
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| Tomodachi luncheon |
After lunch, I met my friend Gregg at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance cafeteria. Gregg is undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma. Most of the time Micki takes care of getting him to and from his appointments but since this is going to go on for a couple of months, she needs help every so often. Like today when she had a work conflict. I am glad I was able to help get him back home and go on a walk with him to Matthews Beach Park, which is near their house. Based on what the doctors have told him, Gregg expects to be back to work in July.
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| Gregg at Mattthews Beach Park |
When I called Mom to remind her to take her pills, she accidentally poured out the pills for both Thursday and Friday. She was going to take the pills for Saturday, then put the pills back in the case for Thursday and Friday; that's what made sense to her. I was able to talk her in to just putting the pills back in for Friday and taking the other pills that had spilled out of the pill case. If this happens enough times, hopefully she will learn how to correct this without my prompting when it happens. I have found that there are some things that she can learn and retain; the actions just have to be simple enough for her to do.
Happy Birthday to Ron!
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01/22/2016 Day 0 Prequel
This is not the final trip, this is a special trip to take Mom to a medical appointment. I am going early to make sure she is taking her medications properly. Right now when they test her they aren’t sure if its off because she’s not taking them or if the meds need to be adjusted.
This morning Kai and I had an animated discussion about the broken foot on my suitcase; the head of the rivet holding it in had broken off sometime during the previous trip. I was going to hot glue it but he said it wouldn’t work because the hot glue was too brittle when it cooled and would break. He said I needed epoxy, which he did not have. Oh well.
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| Before |
So after dinner tonight we went to Lowe’s to get some epoxy. After about 15 minutes of reading the directions on a multitude of products - epoxy, JB Weld, Gorilla Glue, Super Glue, etc., etc. - he finally decided that none of them would work and said, “My first instinct is hot glue.” And I said, “Wait a minute, that was my first instinct! You said it wouldn’t work.” To which he replied, “I meant my last resort is hot glue.” So in the end hot glue won! (He said the epoxies wouldn’t work since they needed 24 hours to cure and it would not be a good idea to send luggage outgassing strange vapors through the TSA’s anti-terrorism-detecting devices.) We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
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| After |
Being retired has been interesting; it’s been a whole 18 days now. The main thing I am having problems with is not having a specific routine (other than calling Mom 3 times a day to remind her to take her meds). After the first week I found myself not eating or going to bed at night at a regular time, which really messed up the following day. Consequently I set up “appointments" on my phone calendar to create a schedule. I have also scheduled in exercise time. Kai has been finding my retirement annoying; he says I disturb him too much. So we came up with the following flow chart. He has become more responsive; I think it was seeing that loop that showed if he did not respond I would keep knocking on his door. I should have done this a long time ago!
01/23/2016 Day 1 Lots of Mini-Chores
Got to the airport bright and early this morning. The lines didn’t seem that long. I did not check but I heard rumors that it was because flights to the east coast were cancelled due to the blizzard conditions. Here’s the reader board for my flight, which only had to put up with rain. As soon as we took off we were engulfed in a cloud bank.
Once we got above the cloud bank it was sunny. It was that way for the rest of the flight. But there were several pockets of clear air turbulence. In spite of that we got in a half hour earlier than anticipated. Which gave me more time to fix things once I got to the house. Within the first hour I "fixed" the TV (the plug had been loosened from the socket and was almost all the way out) and the vertical blinds (the connecting end of one slat was broken, I jury-rigged it for a temporary fix).
By 4 pm I started the set-up of the Wireless Whiskers AutoDiet Feeder. It does a lot of things; the manual is 48 pages long. It was easy enough to get all the tags programmed with each cat’s name and to set it up for the 3-day auto-calibration period; now we wait for it to log how much each cat eats. Apparently it tracks the number of minutes each one eats. It does NOT greet each cat with a voice, the read out says, “Hello Xander” or whomever happens to be eating. Then after that cat is done eating it cycles through and tells you how much his allowance is, how much he has eaten today, and how much he ate yesterday; among other things. Here it is in action.
By the way, Shiro is only being allowed to eat at the Wireless Whiskers during the calibration period when it is left wide open. Once the calibration is completed I will be setting it on the Default Shut option, where it stays shut unless a cat that still has a food allowance available comes by looking for food.
Hope friends reading this on the east coast are staying warm and safe. Mom and Dad were watching the news. Shortly after they interviewed a couple of travelers whose flights had been cancelled, the weather guy said the lows in Hawai’i would be a whopping 68 degrees!
01/24/2016 Day 2 The Shark Died
… well, actually, it’s differently abled. I found that the handle was broken off when I went to use it to do the daily cat hair clean-up after breakfast. Since there are no electronics in the handle I decided to see if I could get the handle back on. I was; if I handled it gently it stayed attached and was workable. And it collected a lot of cat hair during the short period the battery was working. (Mom apparently stopped charging it after the handle broke but would not throw it out.) It’s back on the charger, preparing for a longer workout tomorrow.
I realize I’ve only been gone for 2 months, about half the time that I have normally been gone, but the ‘ohai ali’i and the other shrubs I was trying to get rid of at the front at the house looks like it is under control. The shrubs that I cut then painted with concentrated Roundup were struggling. But an annoying discovery was that someone lopped off the top of the pink ‘ohai ali’i by the back fence that I am trying to train as a tree. It’s already growing very thick and shrubby right at the point where it blocks the view for the neighbors. Not sure who’s doing it or why, since the way I left it created a clear view of approaching traffic.
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| Yay! I don't have to trim the shrubs! |
The back yard is way worse than it was before, however there is only one small patch of kukus. Although Mom wants me to work alongside her to pull all the weeds out, I will be calling the guy that comes and cuts the grass for them to knock everything down. She doesn’t like that because she wants the roots out but she can’t keep up with the weeds even though she thinks she can. (She keeps making excuses as to why it hasn’t been done yet even though its apparent that the reason is that once she kneels down she can’t get up without help so she avoids doing actions that involve kneeling.) Digging out the roots will get rid of them for good but it would take so long a new set of seeds would take hold. Once I move here my plan is to have the yard guy keep things cut back while I work at digging out the roots.
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| Oh, no! |
I had to pick up more cat food to fill the Wireless Whiskers feeder. Here’s my receipt, isn’t that amazing! Maybe I should get a lottery ticket! Oh wait, Hawai’i’ is one of the 6 states that doesn’t participate in the lottery ...
Dengue fever 233, not dengue fever 977. Three cases were still infectious to mosquitoes.
01/25/2016 Day 3 State of the State
Today was the Hawai’i State of the State address; we watched it live. I never really appreciated the unique traditions that have been a part of local activities. For example, the opening prayer was done in Hawaiian as well as English. As the dignitaries were introduced each was given a lei and when the governor was announced he received a double ilima lei (yellow) and a maile lei (green leaves). His address contained many Hawaiian words. Later as I listened to the local news I noticed that there are also a lot of Hawaiian words used.
The cats have adjusted well to living in Hawai’i. They love the cat run. They have all learned to use the cat door to go in and out … and in and out … and in and out … Here’s Shiro, Momo, and Xander joining in Mom and Dad’s after dinner TV watching.
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| l to r: Shiro Mom, Xander, Momo, Dad's knee |
Last night while I was taking the trash out I noticed that the gray trash bin had a hole and a large crack in the side. (I’m pretty sure the hole has been there for a month or so. It wasn’t there at Thanksgiving but its completely open and the missing piece is not in the bin.) Today I called the Honolulu City & County Department of Environmental Services to find out how to get it replaced. (Their website is www.opala.org; opala is the Hawaiian word for rubbish.) The process is that you put an 8&1/2” x 11” sign saying, “City & County Please Replace” on the front of the bin and leave it at the curb until they replace it … which they said could take 4 to 6 weeks … island time ...
Some of you math whizzes noticed that the receipt I posted yesterday did not add up to $123.45. That’s because I made a $2 donation to the local animal shelter and that amount is not included as “Taxable”. Every time I go to Petco I now make a donation to the local animal shelter. All of the cats are rescues so I am a pushover for helping other homeless animals.
01/26/2016 Day 4 A Zippy Kinda Day
On most Tuesdays Mom goes to the Kapahulu Center to play mahjong. I went a little early to see how she was doing. Since I don’t play mahjong I couldn’t really tell if the choices she was making were good ones but she won both of the games I watched. I think because she has been playing for years the basics are sticking with her but when it came time to count up the points she couldn’t do it; the friends she plays with help her with the score keeping. We all went to lunch at Zippy’s after mahjong. Here’s a photo of my Zaru Tempura (had a few bites before I remembered to take the photo). The main part of the meal is the zaru soba (noodles served cold with a cold dipping sauce) with a side of tempura vegetables (with a warm dipping sauce). It is so much better than any I have had in Washington!
On the way out of Zippy’s Mom could not resist buying some desserts at Napoleon’s Bakery. We got 3 breakfast rolls (the ones that look like cinnamon rolls), a whole wheat brownie (in the box with the breakfast rolls), 2 haupia loaded doughnuts (that’s exactly what they’re called), and 2 long johns (one with chocolate and one with custard filling).
A lot was going on at Zippy’s today. There was a flock of moa in the parking garage. It included a hen with chicks that were about a week old. Here’s one of the roosters in the flock. The Hawaiians originally brought red junglefowl with them when they settled the islands. Even with interbreeding with domesticated species, the moa still resembles the original red junglefowl (which is apparently becoming extinct in its home range due to interbreeding with domestic chickens). They are frequently seen around the islands in all sorts of places.
Here’s a little background on the cats. Momo and Shiro are brothers; they’re 14 years old. Their mom was feral and had them in my friend Martha’s artist studio. When they were about 3&1/2 months old she asked me for help in getting them out of her place but wanted me to take them to a no-kill shelter. I knew they would not be adoptable if they were wild so I spent time making them comfortable with people and they kinda grew on us. Xander is 13; we got him from Erica, a friend of our friend Amelia. Erica rescued him and he lived with her mom. When her mom passed away Xander needed a home (Erica already had 5 cats) so we took him in. Chibi is 8 years old. She was wandering around in our neighborhood and slept in our yard underneath the asparagus. She showed up one day with a large chunk of skin and flesh missing from her tail; when it started to get infected I caught her and took her to the vet. None of the neighbors claimed her so she became our final rescue. We stopped at 4 because in the City of Everett you need to get a kennel license for more than 4 cats, dogs, or combination. (There is no limit in Hawai’i but I think I will keep it at 4 since it gets harder to create territories in the house for each new member.)
01/27/2016 Day 5 My Little Child's Health Record
We got a new Shark; it’s called the Navigator Freestyle and the “powerful motorized brush lifts embedded pet hair." I did a test and ran both of them over the same piece of carpet, starting with the old shark. The new shark looked like it sucked up as much cat hair as the old shark; looks like it was a good choice!
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| old (top) & new (bottom) |
The Wireless Whiskers has now completed the AutoWizard calibration period (it did it automatically). Momo, Xander, and Chibi have been eating out of it; both Xander and Chibi, who are a little chubby, reached the limits of their adjusted allowance -10% and had the Wireless Whiskers close on them. Momo hasn’t reached his limit yet since he is allowed 10% more to make sure he doesn’t lose more weight. When Shiro tried to eat from it, the doors closed and kept him out. Shiro is still a little leery of the WonderBowl but will eat from it (the motor makes more noise than the Wireless Whiskers doors). After a late night eating session Momo decided to sleep in Dad’s chair after Dad went to bed.
Since I arrived Mom kept telling me I needed to go through a binder and bunch of other papers related to the Kohala house. I finally did that today. Most of what was in there was the usual kind of stuff you would expect to find. But in the back of the binder was a bunch of Mom’s report cards from school. And in the middle of all that were 2 booklets from when she was a baby. They were put out by the Territory of Hawaii Board of Health Division of Maternity and Infancy. Reading through it you could tell it was produced locally. Under the section on eating vegetables it said, “spinach, cabbage, or taro tops.” It also says to give them, “cooked guava juice, pineapple juice, and papaia [sic]."
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