What I Love About Facebook

In general, the fb feed of people of a certain age, IN a certain age we live in can be dismal. Shootings, Rage, people dying young or old. The hits keep coming. 

But then there's the Hawaiian music feed -- the world renowned slack key guitarist who will take you on a walk in his neighborhood in the early morning while not really saying anything. You can see what it looks like where he lives and hear the chickens waking up. He doesn't really say anything. He also posts videos and a venmo link later in the day when he plays daily concerts in his carport. Then there's the guy who -- how do I even know him? He came to work? He's a well-known ukulele player who we do actually "know" and he posts the best food photos from restaurants in Honolulu that I would never know otherwise. He's the guy who we went to see at the Hibiscus Club, which was one of the coolest times ever.

Anyhoo -- then there's the singer who is arguably best lei maker in the world, (traditional Niihau shell and non-traditional flower lei) who occasionally posts about his kitten he got during the pandemic. Today the lei maker posted that his kitten passed the rubber band he'd eaten the other day. And the world of fans like me heaves a great sigh of relief and has a laugh. That's what the fb is for, People.

You gotta take the happiness where you can find it these days.

Next Stop, The Snake Pit

I can't even recall how many years ago this was, but there was that one Christmas where we went to see mrguy's mom and after she didn't answer but we could hear her cries outside, and after mrguy kicked in the door, we found that she'd been on the floor for a day, unable to move. We took her to the ER and there was a host of deferred maintenance, such as a UTI, toenails that looked like something out of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, general inability to get around, and out of control psoriatic arthritis. Once they got the major stuff out of the way they sent her to rehab to get her mobility better (this after we saw a doctor tell her "Get up, Mary", assuming that she would do it and she said that she couldn't). There was nothing preventing her walking, apparently, aside from a lack of doing so.

Anyhoo, the place where they sent her was full of people, like her, with challenges they were trying to overcome, and some people who did not overcome those challenges, if you get my drift. They made her work hard on her mobility, and was in better shape when she left than she'd been in for years before.

Anyhoo, anyhoo, she called this place "The Snake Pit", which totally cracked us up. And the name has stuck for any such skilled nursing or other environment your loved one does NOT want to be in.

My mom has been in her current community for almost 7 years now. She complains about it. It's nice, and she has a huge window with a view that she really appreciates, but she's always complained about living at this place and talks of moving. I get it, it's not the fancy suburb that she's used to, but she could *not* continue to live in the family home. In the back of my mind I've always thought "You have no idea, mom. Next stop is the snake pit".

Yesterday's journey to the park with my mom and our caregiver went something like this -- pick up sandwiches, pick up the ladies, drive to the park, pick a bench in the shade because it's hot, we sit down. My mom starts whining about wanting to sit in the sun but I don't want to sit in the sun because it's too strong and she will be unhappy. The whining continues, so in a snit I move us to the sun. Then she says she's hot and takes off her shirt (with my help) and then starts pointing her finger to the shady grass under the magnolia on the other side of the park that we can't access in a wheelchair. Then she points to her reddening neck and points to the original bench and says "Shade", so we move everything back to the first bench. I turned to our caregiver and say "What do you bet she wants to go back to the other bench?" We had our answer in about 5 minutes, burst out laughing and we high fived cause it was so funny.

I wish my mom had been able to appreciate what she had at her current home. She had the love of at least one caregiver who has worked for her for 6 years. She was able to see her kids more often than she did when she lived in our family home and one sister would routinely travel 5 hours in a plane to see her. I, personally, appreciated the stability of this place, even though my middle sister kinda hated it.

Today I settled in for my day off that I wasn't expecting to devote to my mom. Had an excellent morning with mrguy and the cats, and spent a good amount of time researching the history of Chinese acrobats in the US, as a friend's wife is descended from prominent acrobats who came here in 1940. Then I did some transcription of a genealogy discussion that I had with my Norwegian cousins in 2018. I had my phone muted, cause what could happen the day after I had devoted myself to my mom, right? Then I eventually felt a buzzing. Oh mom. She had spurned her caregiver, the one who only works on Sunday. She made a scene in the dining room and wasn't allowing the caregiver into her apartment. The poor caregiver, who did nothing wrong, felt chagrinned. It wasn't her fault but I had to intervene, again. I had to drive to her apartment and settle that shit down. Didn't I do this on Thursday also? Oh yes I did. 

And after I drove to her apartment and thought of things to amuse her and let her examine my hands and see which fingers we had that were alike, and let her tell me about all of my shortcomings while she held my ear and also told me that she wants to see me every day, and as I tried to soothe and reason with her and asked her to let me go home to mrguy I thought -- next stop, the snake pit.

You have no idea.

27th Anniversary

Apparently all hell was breaking loose over at the Fun Factory while we were enjoying our anniversary. Much appreciated!

We went to my happy place, at mrguy's suggestion. 

Saw these awesome toofs candies but did not buy.

I had promised myself that I'd buy these Canh Chua fixins and make soup the next time I was at the market. Oh my gosh it was delicious. 

We bought a case of mangoes, yummy snax, some basil seed drink and chrysanthemum tea, itty bitty bananas and some pre-grated green papaya for papaya salad. And some different fish sauce. Wooo!

Then we went to a new distillery in town. It's over by where the forklift factory used to be, next to the train tracks. The owner was sooo nice -- just two guys behind a roll-up door, with a tasting table propped up on kegs. He inoculates his batches with local yeast from his neighborhood -- there's a kombucha brewery nearby and some other business (maybe a bakery?) that releases some tasty wild yeast into the air. That, and a little breeze gives him what he needs. I am not a vodka person, but his vodka had amazing mouth feel. His Monterey Pine gin was also delicious. And his rum! Tastes like an eau de vie, but without a specific fruit flavor added. We bought all three. His amaro that he's working on is not done. It tastes like Indian food -- like turmeric., by some sort of magic that does not involve turmeric.

Anyhoo, we walked away with three bottles, and then went to the brewery next door and had a beer and a great conversation with a former Honolulu TV journalist, who is now in Development at a non-profit here that takes care of people. I admit that our conversation started when she complimented me on my grandmother's diamond ring which I happened to be wearing. She used to work at the Salvation Army in Honolulu but got recruited by the non-profit here. I was able to tell her that the shirt I was wearing I bought at the Salvation Army on Beretania! With granny's ring (hahaha granny!).

Back home I made the soup, and an apricot pie (ok can I say that the recipes varied in the amount of sugar required -- from 2 cups to 1/4 cup. I chose 1/4 cup and it was so sour that we ate mangoes on our apricot pie all week. I'll try to remember that more sugar is good the next time I make an apricot pie).

The soup was the winner of the day. Fish soup with yummy Vietnamese herbs, tomatoes, pineapple and some sort of alocasia. Here's a recipe.
 

A successful anniversary outing, to be sure!

Memorial Day

I've probably mentioned many times how much I have come to dislike holidays. I dislike them for so many reasons, but over the years and increasingly since my mom left her house, holidays are something that I do for other people so they're not sad. There are the big holidays: Thanksgiving (held at my house even if it's just three of us since my sister moved to Minneapolis). Christmas: held at my house in some form since 2015, which includes cooking, presents and transport of my mom hither and yon, even during Covid. And then there are the other holidays, like the paid ones that the ladies have. In general I feel great about giving the ladies a paid vacation. Until I worked at the forklift factory I *never* had a paid day off, so I understand how great it is, and if anyone deserves one it's the ladies who take care of my mom.

So this Monday was Memorial Day and I had Mom for the evening. Even though I was only her caregiver for half of the day, my sister needed some moral support earlier on, because mom was yelling loudly about all sorts of things:

• Her parents loved her little brother more than they loved her
• Her mom was never around
• She wants to go home (this is either a) our childhood home or b) my house or c) wherever more than one of her family members are assembled together)

So it's not like it was restful to split the day with my sister, but I *am* so grateful, cause I got the easier end of the day. Since then, there have been several bad days.

On Sunday my middle sister said that her personal standards for mom transitioning to memory care have been met.

On Monday I made the call.

Every other day of the week I've either been working on some aspect of transition paperwork, writing checks, communicating it all to my siblings, while also stepping in to help on occasion and taking Mom to the park. It's gonna be a wild couple of weeks.

Friday Vacation Day Is Much Appreciated

John Deere gave us an extra vacation day last Friday. It ended up being perfectly timed.

It was dreamy. I went to the jeweler and they fixed my mom's favorite necklace that she ripped off her neck while raging in the ER. They fixed it on the spot and did not charge me. Then I went to pick up some salmon teriyaki plates for dinner. Then I took the long way home and happened to see that the doors to the record store were open. Wheeee!!!

I made a beeline to the back room where they keep all the stuff I like. Turns out that they had a vast number of Japanese records, and even two records of sumo wrestlers singing (which is a genre). I bought them both, even though I suspected that I already had a copy of one of them. I intend to give that extra to clam dip (who I think does not appreciate her nickname).

I totally scored. I doubled my collection of Japanese LPs with smoking dudes on the cover, bringing the total to four. And some of the music was actually good. This Spanish guitar record with a Japanese twist was excellent.

Here are the singing sumotori records. Kotokaze, in orange, is a former ozeki (second highest rank in sumo) who retired in 1985. I really like his record, which you can find here.

And the other guy is Masuiyama II, also a former ozeki. From looking at old posts I can see that I do have his record already, so I look forward to gifting it to clam dip. You can hear the record here.

I won't go through the rest, but this cover really struck me. She's a Japanese woman with a big tattoo on her leg. Isn't that just for yakuza? Had to have it. Showed it to mrguy, who said "She's trans". Oh! Still didn't understand about the tattoo, but sure enough -- her name is Maki Carrousel, and she was one of the first openly trans women in Japan who had gender confirmation surgery, and she was one of the first people to have her gender changed in the official family registers. Super cool! I love that her website lists her blood type. Maybe that's a thing.