Sunday Afternoon 3/5/2017

Brett and I had plans to drive down to Hanapepe this past Tuesday, but the weather here had other ideas. The forecast on Monday called for rain, with even more rain on Tuesday, all over the island. They were not kidding. It rained non-stop all day on Tuesday, but that was just an appetizer for the rain that arrived that night. Brett and YaYu had already gone to bed when it started, but I was still up when the worst of it arrived. It’s the first time in my life I can ever remember being frightened by rain, but it was coming down so hard I thought we might wash away. It didn’t let up all night, and when the wind picked up rain was actually blowing through the window over our bed, the first time that’s ever happened as the house has wide eaves. The storm blew away mid-morning, the key word being blew as the strong winds hung around all day Wednesday. But, the rain was back with a vengeance again Wednesday evening and it rained again all night. Thursday was surprisingly gorgeous, and Friday was lovely, but the rain came back on Saturday. The island is soaked. The storms that blew through the state this past week were apparently strong enough to cause blizzard conditions on the top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island – they got more snow than both Denver or Chicago! Never a dull moment here!

On Monday, YaYu said she felt like she was coming down with a cold, and on Tuesday she felt worse, but got herself up and off to school to take the ACT test, although she said her brain gave out about half way through. Track practice was cancelled because of the rain, and YaYu came home and climbed into bed, where she stayed for the next two days, coughing and burning up with fever. She missed Thursday’s track meet, and we had to reschedule her pulmonary function test to next week. YaYu is one of those kids who rarely gets sick, so it just breaks our hearts to see her so miserable. She’s feeling a bit better now, but we may have to schedule (and pay for) her to take the ACT test again in the fall, depending on how she did this time.

Brett and I are in grandparent heaven – our son and D-I-L have asked us to babysit for them not once, but twice while we’re there! We’ll be watching our granddaughter while the rest of them go to our grandson’s ‘graduation’ ceremony, and then both the kids the next day when our son and D-I-L have an interview with our grandson’s potential elementary school. Our son will be taking vacation days while we’re there, and our grandson will be out of school, so they are planning to go out with us on a few of our excursions – yeah!

Anyway, this afternoon I am:

• Reading: I’m still reading Nobody’s Fool, but have realized I’m not going to finish it before my download expires. Darn! I have some other things on my Kindle that I can read/finish until I can check it out again.
• Listening to: A quiet morning here – the sky is blue and it’s not raining! Brett is reading, YaYu is enjoying her weekly bowl of ramen, and the birds are singing outside. No one is working outside, but I think that’s because it’s still too wet. Laundry will be starting up in a few minutes though which will be the end of quiet for a while.
• Watching: We finished all the episodes of the Great British Baking Show, and again enjoyed it immensely. The things they make all look so good (and tempting). We’re going to watch Moonlight, this year’s winner for best film, tonight and then will go back to watching Ripper Street.
• Cooking/baking: I’m not sure if I’m going to bake today or not – I might make a chocolate cake but it can probably wait until tomorrow. Tonight we’re having zucchini frittata and salami, and Brett and YaYu will also get some garlic toast. The recipe I use for the frittata comes from Jane Brody’s Good Food Book, originally published in January 1980 – it remains one of my all-time favorite cook books. Brody pushes a high carbohydrate diet, but there are plenty of low-carb recipes in the book as well.
• Happy I accomplished last week: I’ve been watching airfares to get WenYu home for the summer for a few weeks now, and found a good fare and great schedule this past week and snapped it up. I am so glad to have that taken care of. I turned up the resistance another notch on the exercise bike on March 1, and got in my three rides every day as well as drank all my glasses of water (and then some). Switching the Japanese to 20 minutes has made that more enjoyable, but I’m not sure 20 minutes of Portuguese is the way to go just yet as I’m having a harder time remembering new vocabulary. I also got my gastro-endoscopy appointment set up for early April.
• Looking forward to next week: I’m looking forward to a somewhat relaxing week as we have nothing pressing on the calendar other than the usual YaYu stuff.
• Thinking of good things that happened: YaYu is feeling a bit more like her old self again, and went back to her Mandarin tutoring sessions this weekend (between Chinese New Years and YaYu’s commitments she lost a couple of weeks of lessons). After the really wacky weather we had at the beginning of the week, Brett and I had a lovely day visiting Hanapepe Old Town on Friday. We put $12.03 in the change/$1 bill jar.

  

• Grateful for: I am actually thankful for all the rain we’ve been getting because a) it means we don’t have to run the sprinklers in the yard which helps keep our water bill low; b) it makes the island so very, very green and lush; and c) it keeps the dust down.
• Bonus question: Have you ever had your fortune told by a psychic or a Tarot card reader and if so, what did you learn? I had a Tarot reading when I was 18, just for fun. All that I remember from that was that I was going to meet and fall in love with a dark man on a ship. Well, I met Brett, who has olive skin and (had) dark hair, and he was in the navy, so who knows? Maybe the cards were accurate. Actually, when I was in college a supposedly very famous psychic came and gave a lecture. His ‘gift’ was that he could look at you and ‘read’ you and your aura, and claimed to see your whole life appear in front of him like a panorama. I went up to him after the presentation and asked a simple question about my future and he answered quickly and dismissed me. I’ve had quite a life since then, including some downright dangerous and frightening incidents that I wished someone could have warned me might be coming down the path. I’ve also had many, many good things in my life as well, but this guy acted like he saw nothing of interest. The person he was fascinated with was my boyfriend at the time. The psychic said he ‘saw something’ and invited the boyfriend to come study with him, but the boyfriend didn’t go. He instead became an insurance agent, got married and had two kids, and has absolutely no psychic talent whatsoever. Hmmmm.

That’s our week! How was yours? What did you accomplish? What good things happened for you?