Introduction to My Journal
Sticky: Jun. 12th, 2015 05:55 pmFirst, trip journals. They're all family friendly. You can also just click the travel tag as well to see everything related to it.
( Just to keep this short... )
I think the hardest thing about this whole thing was that Mom couldn't really talk or process any of it with us. She couldn't voice her thoughts and couldn't do anything for Dad or us about the end of our relationship with her. By the time we found out the tumor had already taken her ability to word. Oddly, luckily, I've had to make closure for myself quite a few times in my past often without input from the other person that was involved.
( Read more... )Hard Things
Feb. 28th, 2025 05:43 pmI'm getting asked a lot these days about how my mother is doing. It's never easy to answer, because she's dying. She's pretty comfortable for all that, all of her needs are being taken care of. She has hospice checking on her every time she needs anything. She's being made as comfortable as possible with modern medicine and care.
Most people end up saying, "That's so hard." And the only thing I can really do is nod. There's something in my head that always says, "It's not hard the way you think it's hard." It doesn't detract from the fact that everything is pretty difficult right now.
( Read more... )Last Chance
Nov. 13th, 2024 07:48 pmWe started the day talking through what it was we wanted to do on our last day here. It was good to talk it all through and to figure out what it was we really wanted to get, do, or experience on our last full day here. We're going to have to leave first thing in the morning to catch our plane to Las Vegas, which should let us get on a plane to Denver. Hopefully there won't be another foot of snow delaying everything there...
( Read more... )Sometimes It Works Out
Nov. 12th, 2024 11:12 pmToday did not start auspiciously. My guts were entirely unhappy with me and the whole situation. After breakfast, we went for a little walk, that was actually quite good.
Grief Adjacent
Nov. 11th, 2024 09:05 pmA Random Walk and a Bike Ride
Nov. 10th, 2024 11:05 pmToday started as something of a random walk, mostly because of the rain showers that were ribboning their way across the island. We never really knew when it would happen, but there would be a sudden downpour and then it would eventually stop. So we started out by going to look at waterfalls.
( Read more... )Kaua'i Coffee and Poipu Beach
Nov. 9th, 2024 11:40 pmWe started the day by going out for breakfast. John had been making our breakfast most mornings, and he'd discovered a little cafe that was only open for breakfast and lunch in the second story of one of the buildings in our little town, and they had some intriguing specials.
So we woke up and walked over to the Olympic Cafe.
( Read more... )Friday was mostly a recovery day. After breakfast we went on a walk. Then we headed back to the complex, and I went and worked out in the gym. I have hip and lower back things now that really respond well to me doing strengthening work. John went and got us more poke for lunch and we spent lunch on a Zoom meeting with Jet. He was on campus and talked with us via his phone until he ran out of charge and ran off to his board game evening get together.
We went on another walk and scouted out bakeries, coffee shops, and found another place that actually sold Kaua'i grown, medium roast coffee. The darker the roast for coffee, the more the roast profile takes over the taste of the whole cup. If you want to enjoy the varietal, then you really want at worst a medium roast that doesn't go too far into the second crack. Yes. We roast our own coffee for Reasons, which include knowing what varietal I have and where I want the roast profile for the coffee involved and if I really want to taste the varietal. Hawaiian coffees, like Blue Mountain coffees are notorious for the fact that they don't actually have a lot of varietal character. They're MILD. People loved them for the fact that they have no taste. It's so funny in some ways.
Dragonfruit is also bemusingly mild. Creamy, the tiny seeds don't intrude, and this startling red beauty was no exception. We cut this in half for breakfast and were amazed by the color, which is actually why dragonfruit commands the prices that it does, honestly, it's beautiful.Thursday, the 7th was a plan to get to see the Kilauea Lighthouse and wildlife sanctuary and to go and walk the Limahuli Botanical Gardens. Both required reservations and some exact timing with those reservations. The Kilauea reservations were done on the half hour, and you were expected to take no more than forty five minutes on the site, and that was stated on the ticket and website. The gardens suggested that one plan for at least an hour and a half on the grounds, and Google maps said that getting there could take everywhere from an hour and a half to forty minutes, depending on the construction that was along the way.
So our plans got a bit more extensive to make sure everything worked.( Read more... )
Walking Day
Nov. 8th, 2024 10:10 pmOn Wednesday we walked.
Right after breakfast, we put on our walking shoes and headed north on the trail. There's a trail right behind the complex we're living in, and it goes fourish miles in either direction, along the coastline, so it accesses a lot of different beaches. I didn't want to go for more than half an hour, as we'd have to make our way back. John had a meeting around lunch time, so we weren't going to go too far this morning anyway.
( Read more... )Getting Knocked Off Course
Nov. 7th, 2024 11:07 pmI was just going to keep going, but we got really knocked off our emotional feet on November 5th, and not for just the reasons a lot of folks did. We actually didn't pay any attention to the Election Day news until late in the evening, and in Hawaii, late is really late for the rest of the country. 7pm in Hawaii is already tomorrow in New York.
( Read more... )Scouting the North Shore
Nov. 5th, 2024 09:01 pmPlanning...
So today was the day we decided to scout the whole of the North Shore, just heading north from our base and going as far as it was possible to go. Kaua'i is like most of the islands here, i.e. an island with a road around it, and a few roads that go up to the top of the mountain in the middle of the island. The road around this particular island, though, isn't a closed ring. The shaping and wear on the mountains to the north cut deep valleys between ridges, and the roads get less and less possible to make the more they try to cross the deep cut valleys from the wear of the water that falls constantly on the top of the mountain. Both Kaua'i and Hawai'i are shaped that way. Not so much Maui or some of the other islands.
But that means that there is an End of the Road going either way along the ring around Kaua'i. And to day we went North.
( Read more... )Kaua'i Thirty Years Later - Getting There
Nov. 4th, 2024 08:08 pmLast Working Day
Sep. 24th, 2024 10:43 pmMoving Toward Buttoning Up
Sep. 22nd, 2024 07:23 pmOnce the roof on the fourth house was up, there were a lot of things that started going into motion. Getting the windows and doors into the house, finishing the front porch, and planning all the framing for the loft and walls in the fourth house.
The other houses still needed work. Following the plumbing and having to move various walls, the floors had to be pulled up while they were doing the work and they all had to be re-lain, sometimes recut to follow the new contours of the rooms or enclosures. Both House Number 1 and 2 had had the flooring done in the spring for the whole loft and the bathroom, and a chunk of that flooring had been pulled up. There were a number of "final" coats of paint to be put up, more battens that could be secured where we had siding, seams to be caulked, and lots of screw holes to be filled.
( Read more... )Raising the Fourth Roof
Sep. 20th, 2024 10:04 pmA little background about the whole of the National YMCA Alumni Service Project. So it turns out that all the camp directors, managers, organizers, and even the cooks that work for the various YMCA camps all over the United States all get amazing pensions. They also organized as alumni, and the alumni organization wasn't all that active and was starting to die off.
Some of the folks in charge of the organization decided to try and do a national service project, and a bunch of folk got really excited about it. They solicited ideas from various Y's all over the country and ended up accepting the proposal by the YMCA of the Seven Council Fires in Dupree. It is the only Y on a Native American reservation, and the idea was to build four houses for single mothers that were looking to get out of generational poverty and multi-generational homes that had problems supporting them appropriately.
( Read more... )Caulking, Battens, and Ohani
Sep. 19th, 2024 10:17 pmI spent most of the morning caulking.
I'm not entirely sure how to convey the depth of history that goes underneath that statement. Let's start with the fact that in a great many volunteer construction projects, that caulking is usually given to the girl with the least experience who just says okay when someone, usually male, asks her to please do the caulking. It's oddly considered by many volunteers as "make work". It's something that's not nearly as fun or fulfilling as using power tools, putting up a wall, building actual framing for rooms, or nearly anything. It's the low man on the totem pole work. And not a lot of people jump up to do it.
( Read more... )A Full Day's Work
Sep. 18th, 2024 09:57 pmDignity and Getting to Dupree
Sep. 17th, 2024 09:00 pmWe started the morning with a Quest.
It was to get to the Dignity of Earth and Sky, a statue that John had found when he and I were looking with Linda K. into the tradition of Star Quilts in the Lakota tribes. The hotel didn't really have breakfast so we made do with a banana we'd bought the day before and the toasted oats I'd brought for myself.
( Read more... )