Recently I put an ad on Craigslist in order to give away a used air conditioner. I post on Craigslist from time to time about elastic for sale in my “Locker” at Ben Franklin. This time, I put my phone number in the ad.
Right away, I had 2 people interested in the free air conditioner via text. I texted back to the first one with an (808) prefix and that person very politely asked if they can verify that I wasn’t a scam by sending back a 6 digit code that they would text to me. So clueless me, I said okay, and sent back their 6 digit code via text. Then the person asked if I had another phone that they could also use to make sure I wasn’t a scam.
This is when the red flags went up and so I google searched – craigslist verification code scam – and got it verified. This was a potential scam and by receiving and sending back the 6 digit code, the scumbags could use it on Google Voice and get another phone number. Sort of on my account – but not really. It could be harmless but nowadays, anything can be detrimental to the one who was fooled.
I texted back to the scambag that I wouldn’t deal with them and will be transacting with the 2nd responder to my ad.
And then, dang! The 2nd responder texted me “ok, I got your post. For my safety, can I send 6 digits number to make sure you are real?” I texted, “No.” And then got a “?” mark as a response. I said to email me and they wrote, “After verify I must call you… So can I send the verification code?”
Persistant buggah. And I left the message room. I edited my Craigslist ad so it didn’t show my phone number and the default Craigslist email was in place.
A lesson learned about posting my phone number for scammers to scam. And I still have the air conditioner in my car with no takers. If anybody wants a Mitsubishi PK30EK condensing unit (the inside part of a split unit) that is old but still in good condition, let me know! It is a dinosaur that needs the compressor part so chances are slim to none that anyone would want it. But, you never know…..
New blogging pal Jan of DJan-ity had a recent post about phatics. A phatic is “small talk” such as “How are you?” even though you don’t really want to know but ask it as a way to start a conversation. Indeed, if someone were to ask me how I was, they wouldn’t really be interested in a detailed answer. BUT, because this is my blog, I want to answer that question and readers can read, or not, and I wouldn’t be the wiser (unless you leave a comment).
Prior to Covid, I felt stressed by being too busy, I was feeling feeble, sluggish, unhealthy, unable to concentrate and getting terribly forgetful.
And then there was Covid
At first, the Covid shut down in Hawaii seemed daunting and terribly boring. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. For the first time in years decades, my calendar was blank because everything was cancelled. Thankfully we had enough toilet paper and hand sanitizer because of my daughter’s easy recipe. I started making masks and used up all my elastic, then ordered more from Amazon which took months to arrive. On the few ventures out to get food or supplies, the traffic was so light and parking so plentiful, it was a joy to be on the road again. Honolulu almost felt like a ghost town.
Exercise
TaiChi classes were no longer held, but by chance I found DJan-ity’s (yep, the same one with the phatic word) post about flowers on her porch, in which she mentioned Five Tibetan Rites that she does on a daily basis. Very intrigued, I began to twirl, hook, arch, table, and dog (my descriptions). There was something about those exercises that seemed like the answer and so I struggled through them until they are now a very easy and fast start to every morning. I don’t do the recommended 21, which would be torturous and long, imo. I have settled into a wimpy 3 that works for me. My arm strength is so much better and I can do sit ups and push ups because of these exercises.
Brain Food
I was really getting worried about brain fog and began taking a supplement from Green Valley Natural Solutions called Brain Vitality Plus. It has ingredients that are different from products I have taken before and by golly I now can perform bookkeeping tasks that were getting difficult and I don’t have brain fog anymore. I am still forgetful by nature but have much better short term memory recall now, such as when I would walk into a room and forget why I walked there.
Hair Growth
At the beginning of 2020 I began to occasionally enjoy some CBD sleep gummies from Charlotte’s Web because they tasted so good. I noticed that new baby hairs on my receding hairline were growing so began having 1 before bedtime every night. Now my hairline looks full like it used to. Then, about 2 months ago, at the urging of Yasumi Gojo of Healing Seitai, I started eating cloves of black garlic that her husband makes in an old rice cooker. Prior to, my salt and pepper hair was getting whiter and all those new baby hairs were growing in white, but now my hairs are turning black! I am now in the process of making my own black garlic and will share the method with you in a future post. Sidenote: Do NOT buy the bottled black garlic from Costco. It is made in China. Pal Wandaful did some research on it and warned me about it.
Jan 2021 more baby fuzz!
April 2021 more hair, and darker!
Strength
In the summer, I began to weed and weed and weed our yard. It was overgrown with undesirable plants, as well as being unlevel and wild. At the same time, I started taking BioAstin from Costco made with Hawaiian Astaxanthin. It acts as a natural sunscreen but I began taking it because it was made in Hawaii and supposedly good for a lot of things. Here is a health article about it. What I noticed right away was that I could continue to work in the yard everyday without a break. Before, after a hard day of weeding, using a pick and moving rocks, I would be in such pain the next day that it took me days to recover. Not anymore! I feel like Superwoman now. And I am still weeding and weeding and weeding.
Looks daunting but is an enjoyable challenge for weeder loving Aunty!
Fasting
I read and re-read Dr. Stephen Gundry’s “Plant Paradox” book. It might have been where I first heard about Hawaiian Astaxanthin. I also learned about the benefits of intermittent fasting. I now fast every Monday. After Sunday dinner and my night snack, I don’t eat anything solid until Monday dinner. I have coffee in the morning along with yogurt and almonds (nuts are okay during fasting) and only water or tea during the day. I do get hungry but tell myself that I just have to wait for dinner. It is rather easy to do a one day fast and I am now at my ideal weight and feel healthier. I will do a post about Dr. Gundry’s book. It is a game changer and a life saver.
Looks
My hair is so long now because I haven’t gone to Mai’s Beauty Salon for over a year. I just pull it back into a ponytail. I know I look older, but I don’t mind anymore. I don’t dress up anymore. I don’t wear fancy earrings either because it gets in the way of my masks. If I go out in boro clothes, I feel fine because I am hidden behind my hat and mask. It is rather fun to be incognito. One of the advantages of wearing a mask out everywhere I go is that I don’t have to worry about sun damage to my face. I sometimes wear a mask when I am weeding for that reason. I look like a plantation worker with big hat, mask, long sleeve shirt, gloves,long pants and boots. And I love it!
Time
I also love having the luxury of days of not having to do anything. Sometimes I totally waste the day, sometimes I work so hard and accomplish so much I have to pat myself on the back. Covid has been the biggest disruptor to the most lives in the most unpredictable way. It is as if a whole year has disappeared, and time has been reset. I like being older and feel that the changes that I have made in the “missing” year are really great for me.
How am I?
So if you were to ask me how I am, I would say, “Good, thank you” but I would really mean “I have more hair, I have more time, I am stronger, my garden is looking better and better, and I am not worried about Alzheimers anymore!” And then I would ask you, “How are you?” (comments are most welcome!)
Years ago, Aunty paid ChicagoSlim on fiverr.com $5 to review her website.
It was brutal. HonoluluAunty scored an “F” for layout, too much going on, difficulty in navigating, yadayadayada-ness, and more. It was good to know and have an unbiased expert review, and after that report card grade, I had to spiff it up.
So, Chad Lamotte of GoodfellaMarketing.com totally revamped my website and for a few years, it worked great. However, WordPress changed a bit and the website started having problems. Chad wasn’t able to help. I was too much of a non techie to know what to do, paid a local company a lot to fix it but ran into problems with graphics and that went kaput.
Meanwhile, I just let it slide until I happened to see the Fishcake.us website because I took a few ceramic classes there. I discovered Janis Lee, their manager, who designed their chic modern look and flyers. She was willing to redo Aunty’s website and sent me over to Wix.com for ideas and themes. Turns out they are a great company BUT there are sign up fees and subscription fees. Not for me who likes free and comfortable, i.e. WordPress.
Janis had no experience with WordPress, but took a look, touched a new theme called Twenty Eleven, and shazam! HonoluluAunty had a new clean look, for free, and still comfortable for me to post, navigate, and be “Aunty”. Much mahalo to Janis!!!
Better than lipstick on a pig, happier than Christopher Columbus in a speedboat…
All of my friends and family know that I am a mess. Messy house, cluttered rooms, too much going on all the time.
However, after many many listens to Mari Kondo’s Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I started doing a bit of cleaning at a time. My kitchen countertops got cleared off (oops they need another go round), my bedroom got cleared out and my wardrobe has been halved. Little victories and areas of clean inspire more work and focus with new spots to tackle.
Our old bathroom was transformed with classic travertine walls and floor. I found a gorgeous old vanity with marble top and grand wall mirror for it. All was beautiful except for the old tub, which was grungy and dirty. The travertine tile mason (Jason Carroll of Hawaii Kai Custom Stone) recommended that I use a product called Diamond Magic to make the 90 year old tub look like new.
Elbow grease and a power tool help
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Diamond Magic is made here in Hawaii! I bought the product and white scrubbing pad, watched the videos, and then headed out to Re-Use Hawaii to see Ben at the Honolulu Tool Library to borrow a sanding machine that had a velcro attaching disc.
It took a couple of hours of vibrating and sweat. A lot of clean rags that soon became dirty. I used Diamond Magic with the sanding machine and also by hand on inside curves. I also used a pumice stick to remove the stubborn calcium buildup by the drain. I took a break halfway through.
The finish line
Before I knew it, I was done! The tub looks good and my old bathroom sparkles! I don’t have to draw the shower curtain to hide it anymore – though I still might because I use it as a storage space for my overflow of fabric and projects.
Kudos
I love using Diamond Magic and plan to use it on my soap scum challenged glass blocks in my shower as well as on my windows with hard water spots.
Ben over at the Honolulu Tool Library is so helpful with supplying me with the right tool that a senior old lady like me can handle. They are open on Tuesday mornings, Friday afternoons, and on Saturdays. I pay the senior discount rate of just $35 per year and can borrow whatever tool I need for free for a week!
In the past I have borrowed a Gorilla Cart to haul buckets of dirt and rocks, a mini jack hammer to dig out a lemon tree (that didn’t survive), a sawzall to cut away trunks and roots, a staple gun to repair an upholstered chair, and a Dremel sanding kit for polishing up this tub.
I have saved so much time and money there and will continue to do so until I can’t lift and carry a sack of sand. I returned the wonderful Dremel kit on Saturday and borrowed an angle grinder with a diamond wheel so I could cut out a portion of a cement wall. I am also using it to cut off some points on a concrete grass block. It is so very empowering to do it yourself.
Aunty feels macho. And that’s a good thing. Tawanda!
My sister-in-law, Jo Ann Fukao, passed away in October after losing the battle with cancer – that had returned after 3 remissions.
I remember when my brother met her on a blind date. Like Apollonia and Michael Corleone in the Godfather, it was colpo di fulmine for them – when love strikes someone like lightening, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. Not only was she extremely beautiful on the outside, she was even more beautiful on the inside.
Our kids called her Aunty Hugalani because she had the best hugs, every single time.
When she blew her nose (quite often), she honked so loud that babies would get startled and everyone would turn to look to find the source. And then she would laugh. Delightful peals of laughter that made everyone also laugh.
Because of Covid-19 restrictions, a Celebration of Life video has been put together with guidance from her former church pastor. Even if you don’t go to church or believe in God, if you knew her, she has risen from being an angel on earth to being an angel in the heavens. She lived and breathed joy, peace, and love every day of her life.
One of Aunty’s favorite writers is Mark Ford aka Michael Masterson. He used to write financial advice and the mindset for wealth but recently he came out of retirement and writes about common everyday pleasantries and finds.
I do like his movie recommendations – Octopus Teacher, Fargo, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Home for the Holidays and others – as well as his wit and observations.
His latest was about sumo – which he calls “full grown men having a shoving contest in diapers.” He highlighted a Czech born wrestler named Takanoyama Shuntaro – in error since Takanoyama had retired in 2014. However, despite his mistake, the tournament he referred to was in May 2019 with Tochinoshin Tsuyoshi – a Mtskheta, Georgia born sumo wrestler.
It is a fascinating sport. Hawaii has also had many sumo wrestlers, among the best were Takamiyama (Jesse Kulaulua from Maui), Konishiki (Saleva’a Fuauli Atisano’e born in Samoa), and Akebono (Chad Rowan from Waimanalo).
Here is Tochinoshin’s highlight video from last year. The surprise comes at the end:
Aunty speaks very poor Japanese and makes up stuff. So, taihen potter, in my lingo is “REALLY great potter”. This film was made in 1970 and the artist died in 1978. He created his compound after living abroad for 3 years and did ceramics from scratch to kiln. He produced thousands of pieces, each one with his hand in it.
This is just a temporary post – Aunty wants to be an affiliate marketer for the Charlotte’s Web products – a post will be forthcoming one of these days. But, to prove that I am me, I need to have the words “pepperjam verification” on my home page.
So that is why this post is named such.
S0rry if that is confusing. It is confusing to me, too.
For Thanksgiving this year, we had the usual feast with a very small group of family – which meant there were a LOT of leftovers. Except for pumpkin pie. Lanakila Kitchen’s annual turkey fundraiser included a perfectly cooked 22 lb turkey with homemade stuffing, gravy, corn on the cob, sweetbread rolls, and seasoned roast potatoes, and one little 8″ pumpkin pie. Hardly enough pie to feed the family and nothing left to give away.
This made pie become an almost obsession for Aunty. I really wanted to have a big piece of pumpkin pie – and pal Kay’s picture of Art’s pumpkin pie started a quest to bake one of my own.
I started with my mother’s pie crust recipe. She used to make the BEST lemon chiffon pie from scratch, mixing the chiffon part into the lemon pudding for a wonderful light texture. Her crust was divine. MmmmMmmmMmmm.
She would refrigerate the knives and bowl – to ensure the crust is flakey.
Grannie’s Pie Crust (makes 2 very small or 1 large pie crust)
2 cups sifted flour
3/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup shortening
4-6 TBS cold water
Put sifted flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Cut in the shortening with 2 cold steel butter knives until sort of mixed. Add cold water, a tablespoon at a time and mix with spatula until dough forms. Roll into 2 balls. Flatten out with rolling pin. Drape over pie crust, trim, and form ridges along edge. Bake in a 450° oven for 15 minutes. Cool. I used just one dough ball and refrigerated the other for another pie another day.
The pumpkin puree can called for cans of evaporated milk – which I did not have. But, because daughter #2 loves to put sweet condensed milk in her drinks, I did have cans of that, so found an easy recipe from Baking Bites. I made some changes with the spices and also in how I cooked it at a consistent lower temperature for a longer time (because it was easier).
Sweetened Condensed Milk Pumpkin Pie
(or Four Ingredient Pumpkin Pie)
1 15-oz can pumpkin puree (approx 1 3/4 cups)
1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 tsp pumpkin spice ( I used 1/2 tsp each of ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger)
2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
1 tsp worchestershire sauce (update on 2nd pie)
Preheat oven to 325F.
In a large bowl, whisk together pumpkin puree, sweetened condensed milk, eggs and pumpkin pie spice. Add in vanilla, if using. Pour into cooled crust.
Bake for 60-70 minutes, or until the pie filling is set and jiggles only slightly when the pan is jiggled.
My first pumpkin pie
How was it? Not sure. The crust was really flakey, which I like a lot. The pumpkin filling was “meh” because I baked it for 60 minutes and by the time I checked on it, it didn’t jiggle at all. Overcooked it. This recipe was double enough for an 8″ aluminum pie pan so I will bake another one soon and keep the cooking time down.
Still, I would consider it a success because it is edible and tastes like a pumpkin pie. And maybe it was easy, for a person who doesn’t really cook.
Update three days later
I backed another pie with the other half of the crust dough (me thinks I need to find a marble slab for rolling ease) and I added worchestershire sauce to the pie filling, just to try a zapper. I also didn’t bake it for an hour – just 45 minutes in the oven – and it still was past jiggling.
However, I think it was a success!!! Aunty can bake pies!
All of my friends and family know that I am a mess. Messy house, cluttered rooms, too much going on all the time.
Kudos
For Thanksgiving this year, we had the usual feast with a very small group of family – which meant there were a LOT of leftovers. Except for pumpkin pie. Lanakila Kitchen’s annual turkey fundraiser included a perfectly cooked 22 lb turkey with homemade stuffing, gravy, corn on the cob, sweetbread rolls, and seasoned roast potatoes, and one little 8″ pumpkin pie. Hardly enough pie to feed the family and nothing left to give away.
How was it? Not sure. The crust was really flakey, which I like a lot. The pumpkin filling was “meh” because I baked it for 60 minutes and by the time I checked on it, it didn’t jiggle at all. Overcooked it. This recipe was double enough for an 8″ aluminum pie pan so I will bake another one soon and keep the cooking time down.