Daily Adventures

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. 

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.

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... )

I 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. 

Once 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.

 A 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.

That said, nearly the moment we actually left the house, I fell asleep. John was driving, of course, and as those of you who know me well from this blog, I had a ton of things leading up to the moment of leaving, including, of course, all the preparation, the packing, and all the things that we had to finish before we could leave.

I have also been wrestling with nearly six months of having my hands and forearms hurt at night, whether I played games or not. Even when we were out on trips for a week or more, my hands and arms continued to ache at night. And some part of me took that as a sign that I was going to have to cut back yet again on the things that I did and I'd had enough of that. I was down to just about two hours a day of play, and having to watch computer usage, painting, calligraphy, and knitting. I don't knit much anymore, either. 

So I happened on the 1HP channel on YouTube and they gave me hope, but after the first week, I was in a lot MORE pain. It's something they say should be expected, but it's hard to sleep when I'm in pain. The interesting thing, though, is that my strength and flexibility of my wrists and hands is demonstrably better than I started... still, I was up half the night with worry, so John let me sleep for the first two hours on the road. Then, because it was freeway, he asked if I wanted to drive, so I did.