Daily Adventures

I'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.

Today 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. 

Today 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.

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. 

This time we got Da Mango. It was lovely. Mango syrup, a mango cream, mango chunks all over the top, and lovely little mochi bits all around the edge. They added chew. It was so good, and even better when we shared it. 

 On 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. 

Planning...

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. 

I decided to enjoy a sunset and a campfire tonight, so I'll probably write about today tomorrow....

I 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.

 We 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.