'Awapuhi Blooms in Suburbia!

A few years ago a neighbor was giving away ginger rhizomes. She had dug so many out of her garden that it looked as if a dump truck had unloaded them on her driveway.

I didn't end up planting that many in the garden because our dirt was hard as a rock. So I potted some in big old plastic pots with potting mix and put *those* on top of the dirt underneath our kitchen window. I keep meaning to plant them for real at some point...and then I don't. 

In the meantime the ginger seems to like it where it is.

And this week our first yellow ginger flowered. It smells amazing. As the song goes:

My yellow ginger lei

Reveals her scent through the day

Enchanting moments with you

Make me love you.

Kuʻu lei ‘awapuhi melemele

I puīa me ke ʻala onaona

Hoʻohihi ka manaʻo iā ʻoe

E kuʻu lei ʻawapuhi

Quick Quiz!

I'm going to take a guess that this song was written by Johnny Noble, because he often used the metaphor of a fragrant flower to describe his beloved (he was blind).

Wrong!

I looked it up, and My Yellow Ginger Lei is by a guy I don't know, John Ka'onohiokala Keawehawaii.

Johnny Almeida and John Keawehawaii perform it on this recording.

Listening to the original, I kinda get why artists like Led Kaapana make a medley out of it with other songs. It's super repetitive. And maybe that's a reason that it's popular with non-professional hula dancers -- the verse in Hawaiian and English is the same, which means that the dance is easy to remember.

Another random thought: on this particular recording they don't credit the female vocalists. Bummah, but a quick search of Discogs shows that JKK's group, The KeaweHawaiis, credits Linda De La Cruz as one of the vocalists. They were lucky to have her.

A favorite version of a song we used to do in the big ukulele band.

Verb. It's A Noun.

Yesterday was magnificent. I went shopping at Canned Food Warehouse, and it did not disappoint. The people who once brought me HammerMan Toothpaste have now done something that was previously thought undoable. 

They have made verb into a noun. A proper noun.

How did this product make it to market? Howwwwww? I took this photo just because of the name, and it was only when I went to add it to this here post that I noticed the full-throated absurdity of the product. It's definitely for nerds. First...Verb. Second, it is a cookie dough flavored energy bar. Third, it's caffeinated. If only it were Captain Crunch-flavored. Then you'd have everything. Wow.

Plus Sauerfrau. 

The squeezable kraut for vegans who hate women and are too lazy to open a jar:

Squeezable

Non GMO

Bavarian

Vegan

Fermented

With caraway seeds

Enjoy!

Nature

In a quiet, redwood-scented suburban landscape, a small maple tree stands, struggling. The redwoods, here long before the houses, stand tall and firm, unconcerned by the breeze. 

The birds, here long before the houses, mistake the windows for air, and lay stunned on the threshold. 

Orange termites, their wings heart-shaped when at rest, will quietly dine on the house and the bits of trees cast down from above, and people will replant and rebuild. 

The maple does not belong here, but adds a heartbreaking flash of visual impact as it casts off its party dress for winter. A lone leaf dances in the breeze, tethered to the branch by a cobweb. It wants to join its family in the leaf litter below but can't seem to let go. 

It will continue its performance, the struggling, the figure eights, battering itself against a branch until nature, mercifully, breaks it free.

She's Not There

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it68QbUWVPM

By which I mean the mom I knew. Her body is here, but her "self" is not. 

Mrguy and I had really interesting discussions about the idea of self, yesterday. It's mutable over time. Mom's prior "self" cared about manners and how things looked. She hated vulgarity, and made you spend your time on vacation writing postcards to people back home. She hated things about me that even her most respected peers liked...and could not let them go. I did not stack up. Well at least that *last* part hasn't changed!

Now who wins the prize in vulgarity? That would be mom. And while I knew to expect that as part of end-stage Alzheimer's, I did not know that she would also become violent. While we were on vacation last week she was out of control for three full days, physically and verbally tormenting all of the people who care for her. This week is not much better.

Quote of the week from her most beloved caregiver: "She talks all day about how she will find a knife, stab your heart and slice you apart."

There you go. More laughs from the fun factory.

Street Corner Vacation

Last night while sweltering and sitting outside, we decided to take a street corner vacation today. About a mile down from our house you can park, and:

Charge your electric car

Check out the progress of the graffiti on a shuttered bar

Drink the yummiest Guatemalan grape soda

Buy that cumin you need at a Tibetan market.

One Two Three -- A List

I took two weeks off in September, just because. Just because I thought I was never going to be able to take a real vacation and go somewhere before the end of the year. I didn't want to leave vacation days behind, so I did a staycation. And here's what I did, organized in honor of the Jimmy Cagney movie One Two Three (1960).

One

- Vet appointment for boy kitten (antibiotic shot)

- Eye appointment: selected a new eye doctor based on neighborhood recommendations and his website's acknowledgment of his love for Earth Wind and Fire. He was great, and the EWF stuff was no joke. He also loves Lionel Ritchie and Con-funk-shun. His office was next to a famous shoe repair place, so I brought along my clown shoes to get a spa treatment. When I told my beloved trainer about the doctor she said "Is it Dr. X? I've been seeing him for 20 years." Of course you have, friend!

- One hour or so transcribing Freedman's Bureau records.

- One end of mourning period gathering on zoom. My friend's mom, who became my friend also, was a long-time member of an ashram, and so a lot of the folks who shared their memories filled in the gaps, a bit, on the time when my friend was raised in the inner circle of this religious community and which community it actually *is* so I could do a little followup research. Now I get it. Remember the cleanse of 2021? All of those folks were part of that community, even the ones who didn't present as hippies. They were all from the ashram. Popping back up to the top, this event was one of the most enjoyable and best curated memorials I have ever attended. I was so impressed.

- Made one mackerel mousse. So delish.

- Made a cheese ball. Also delish.

Two

- Genealogy workshops: Irish and Familysearch. Learned a few things and got a bit more information about my Irish ancestors. Turns out that two of my grandfather's siblings died in early childhood in the workhouse in Navan.

- Writing workshops: my regular third Sunday writing group and a special workshop on self-love and forgiveness. Fun fact: that second workshop was hosted by a person whose famous novel took place in the religious community that my friend was part of. Didn't know that until my research after the memorial. 

- Sumo viewings with a girlfriend (one of them in person, with outrageous snacks and cold sake in cedar cups)

- Batches of deviled eggs.

Three

- I communicated with three different people from work who Slacked me to do handoffs of archival material while I was on vacation.

- Movies: I watched One Two Three, starring Jimmy Cagney, which I'd liked in the past. Favorite line? "Put your pants on, Spartacus". Also saw The Inventor (in a theater!), and Piramida, which follows the band Efterklang, as they gather sounds at a former Soviet coal mine in northern Norway to use in a recording. This film was a download from years ago that was given freely with the requirement that you could do a viewing with five people. I could never get five people to watch it, so it languished in my list of dumb things I feel guilty about for ten or so years. The film wasn't what we thought at all, and the most interesting parts ended up being about the parallel story of a former Piramida worker who narrated vintage footage that he'd shot while working there.

The end. Two weeks off, and another vacation -- this time out of town.

News from Wirecutter

New York Times' Wirecutter delivered this important combo toilet paper dispenser / grab bar information today, when they let me (and the world) know that they exist. I love a grab bar. Wirecutter -- I am finally your demographic!!

Last summer, when Mom was still ambulatory and coming over to our house every week, she'd use our half bath and use the toilet paper dispenser as a grab bar. It was not engineered for that. We only realized this halfway through our remodel, and after we had made the wall cut for the traditional in-wall toilet paper dispenser.

Mrguy made a change order to patch the wall, and then we ended up getting one of these:

I always felt judgy about this style of dispenser, but I'm happy to have the toilet paper not sit on top of the toilet tank.

Three months after we finished the remodel, mom took a fall and since then stairs make it impossible to visit.

Had we only known about this:

It looks cool, it's old age proof and I love it. If only our walls weren't all sealed up.

Voice Memo

When I visited my mom yesterday to deliver supplies and meet our caregiver (who has been fabulous so far), I arrived to find mom with a death grip on a pillowcase, swatting the caregiver and threatening to kill her. By the time I left, she had kissed her on the cheek, sweetly.

In between:

She tried to break my finger. She tried to bite me. She likes to fix her mean, almost turquoise eyes on you, and sneer while crunching whatever part of you she's got a grip on. It's pretty cinematic.

Then she went on many unpleasant rants, captured on my iPhone. Thank you, Steve Jobs, for Voice Memo!

Mom:  I hope somebody kills her. Got it? She is trying to kill us. I'm going to get up and see if I can hit her [the caregiver] in her head. And if you get in my way I'm going to hit you.

Mom: You want someone to come up to you and say "I'm going to kill you?" 

Me: That didn't happen.

 

Mom: You don't care if you live or die?

Me: You are extra extra today

Mom: You're the baby I shouldn't have had.

Me: I know, but that's your fault, not mine

In the background, on tv, soothing Ben Napier of HGTV's Home Town waxes rhapsodic about what he loves about cedar.

Mom: I don't want to die. I want to stay with you. 

Me: Please don't die, then.

Mom: You better be working on saving me.

Me: Every day I work on saving you. It's my life mission.

Later

Mom: You're stupid....

Me: I may be stupid, but I love you. I don't really know what to say when you say such awful things, mama.

And this crazy interlude, where she began hectoring me about my not having a baby went on forever. She was sobbing and snapping at me and that seems to be about abortions of the past. I never had one, but other family members did.

Mom: Aren't you glad? Sure. You didn't want a baby anyway. Well you could have let somebody else have it.

Me: That's gross.

Mom: You're such a dumb bunny. I'll sock you. 

And then the weird riff -- 

Mom: You never did want children. We'll get you a gun and you can have it. Yeah -- other people's children, You HAVE, too. And you made up children.

Me: I made up children? Ok, I did.

Mom: I've seen it happen. I'm gonna hate you. 

Me: It's ok. You can hate me if it makes you feel better. I love you. 

Mom, sobbing -- That's what you wanted. You wanted NO children. Don't you feel good? You're stupid...stay away from me from now on. You're ugly. 

Me: You trained me not to fight back, lucky duck!

Mom: I want to go home right now. Maybe I could find somebody to give a child. I feel sorry for the child.

And...scene!

Tomorrow mrguy and I are going for a few days out on the Coast. I gave my sisters the information for the mortuary and I told them I hope they get to use it. I asked them not to call me, email any of my email addresses or contact me in any way because I don't care and I hope she dies soon.