I do believe one of the rules of successful blogging is to post at least once a week. Ha! So I am doing unsuccessful blogging and not stressing about it. When my techie son comes in October (from Portugal!), I will ask him to reinstall Google adsense which places ads on my website – but I want more subtle ads – like maybe only one on a page.

Older and maybe wiser, but more forgetful
I got older – but I think I am a bit healthier because I take exercise classes at the Kaimuki YMCA. I take the Silver and Fit chair/weights/resistance bands classes on Tuesday and Wednesday with Yoli. She plays the best music and makes all of us energized and happy. TaiChi got moved to 6:45 am – yikes! So I only do the Thursday afternoon practice session with Mike. I just stopped doing Jazzercise because I have more morning events at the Hawaii Potter’s Guild, the pace was too energetic for me since my speed is TaiChi and sit down stuff.

Moving and change
My move from upstairs to downstairs is complete but I still have SO much stuff! I donate to Re-Use Hawaii (temporarily closed while they find a place to relocate) and Savers (senior discount of 30% on Tuesdays!). And I began selling on ebay under 3 user names – bead_bozu, thcollection, and honoluluaunty. Why 3 user names? Not sure – but I have always made my life more complicated than it needs to be. Ebay has gotten even easier to list items for sale and is helping me clear out things that my kids won’t want (which makes me sad).

I now have 2 cute hapa grandsons and 1 cute hapa granddaughter. But I do not babysit. I am being selfish and want to have my own time to do what I want. I do occasionally watch the 2 little ones since they live upstairs from me. But boy! parenting is such hard work! I had 4 young ones and I really don’t remember how I got through each day and the passing years.

And now, the tip of the day!

We have young new neighbors across the street. Chika and her family bought the house that used to have single guys who did short term rentals and the yard was a mess with bushes of haole koa as well as cars everywhere. They really cleaned up the yard, renovated the house, and trimmed the trees so it now looks great! And she loves to do yardwork – just like me!

So one day I was clearing out a patch of weeds to make room for a puakenikeni tree. I had so many keiki haole koa growing – and those roots are deep and tough to pull. Chika saw me struggling and came over with an old plier and started pulling out ALL of them very quickly and rather easily!

It was AMAZING!

So that is the tip of the day. Save your old pliers and put them in your gardening tool bag. Below are pictures of roots that I would never have been able to remove without disturbing the root ball of a night blooming jasmine tree that I was given. They were just skinny deep roots that were part of a grass weed that could have become a problem, but are now exterminated. Thank you to young Chika! Goes to show that you can teach an old dog aunty new tricks!

Okay, I had my root canal done by Dr. Nozomi Yamauchi over at Island Endodontics a couple of weeks ago. How was it? Longer than anticipated because my tooth was quite endangered. But it was also very wonderful because of the gadgets that are employed (mouth trampoline, soft block to hold my mouth open, and the most comfortable chair to relax in and headphones to listen to music. He is located in the most beautiful building in Kaimuki – 3660 on the Rise, and fully validates parking (I was there for TWO hours!).

I was worried that I would have extreme pain and recovery but I had zero pain that day and night, except for the area where the numbing shot went into my gum line. He had to cut away some of my gums (deep and invasive decay) so I was told to keep that area free from food debris with rinses. This was easy to do since I had started Dr. Ellie Phillips’ rinse, brush, and rinse, rinse procedure. I was shown pictures of my abscessed tooth and the after pictures of a ceramic post (which was then covered with a temporary “tooth”.

Yesterday I went to see my wonderful dentist, Hideki Kurokawa (808) 538-0047 for a cleaning with my favorite dental hygienist Liane (she cracks me up) and to schedule a crown. I told her about Dr. Ellie’s rinse brush rinse rinse protocol with certain sodium fluoride products and she commented about how glossy my teeth had become. She was a bit taken aback when I mentioned not flossing. She also showed me how to brush the gumline and teeth with a diagonal motion rather than straight across to really get into the pockets of teeth and gum.

She spoke to Dr. Kurokawa about what I was doing and when he came in for the consult, he said to keep doing what I was doing. According to Dr. Ellie, if my mouth is in optimal health and my saliva is doing what it should be doing and not acid from sugar, foods, etc., cavities can actually be reversed. I have this one cavity right on the top of my front tooth that will be the guinea pig for this. It is so visible and easy to monitor.

What Dr. Kurokawa said was very interesting. He said many things do work for peoples’ health and well being but it also depends on whether or not people actually do what needs to be done. I raise my hand in guilt. But this one – I WILL do. And I just received my order of Zellie’s Xylitol gum and mints (it took 2 weeks to get to me!) and will have a gum after every meal, drink or snack. Did you know that in Finland they give Xylitol gum to the little children after their lunch and recommend it to pregnant mothers so they combat the ravages of decay in their mouths?

But I digress. To floss or not to floss. Here is Dr. Ellie Phillips presenting her side of the story. And if I do floss, it will be when my mouth is full of Crest Anti-Cavity toothpaste.

Update: Pal Cleta is doing Dr. Phillips’ protocol and had a very good dental exam recently. Hurray! I, myself, am beginning to take my cleaner teeth and mouth for granted – but it really is so much cleaner and feels so much more healthy. It is quite wonderful that I stopped wanting to just pull out all of my teeth and wear dentures.

This tip is for Cleta. Those Act mouth rinse bottles are different from the other bottles with measured doses by squeezing the bottle. I liked that feature and now have the CloSys mouth rinse and the Listerine mouth rinse in the Act bottles. To do that, I pull out the tube thing that sticks up from the “cup” with long nosed pliers. Then I am able to fill the empty Act bottles with either Listerine or CloSys. Put the tube thing back in the bottle, cover with a paper towel and use a small hammer to pound it back in place. I peel off the old Act label (leaves a very stick residue) and then put the CloSys label in its place. I do the same with Listerine (though that label is rather difficult to remove). Then, tadaaa! I have 3 very easy to use rinses that give me just the right amount of liquid for each step. Hope this is a good tip to others!

This was a link from Mark Ford, a writer, author, expert in investing, etc. that I like to follow. And after watching this, I also started following Dr. Chatterjee who does weekly podcasts. One of them was a very short one about doing what you love. I am going out to weed in the garden now – because I love that.

May you have a prosperous, healthy, and happy new year in this wonderful lunar year of the DRAGON!

(Aunty is a Dragon, rooooaaaarrrr!)

Sometimes Costco has pretty good packaged foods. Sometimes it just isn’t to my taste so I don’t like it but this time, it was really not good at all.

It was on sale. Regular $13.99. Now $9.99 with $4 off! Cannot go wrong – 2 servings, only $5 each and super easy to make. Put the dried noodles in a sauce pan, pour sauce over and heat until hot (about 8 – 10 minutes) on stove top. Super easy!

Super easy, but also super junk! Especially if you like Pad Thai. Maybe if you didn’t know what Pad Thai is supposed to taste like, you might think the mushy kinda tomato sauce with bell peppers (I don’t like bell peppers) was okay. But if you know how good Pad Thai can be when it is stir fried with fresh ingredients and served hot and aromatic and each bite is heavenly, then you will definitely NOT like this fake Pad Thai.

Just wanted to send out a warning. I was sucked in by the big sale price. Buyer beware!

I couldn’t go on the keto diet because I love my rice. One of my favorite meals consists of frying up some Portuguese sausages and eating it with hot white rice and some tsukemono on the side.

Since I now live alone, I just make one cup of rice in my Tiger rice cooker. I usually eat half of that and leave the rice in the pot on warm. If I take too long to eat it, it gets hard and crusty on the edges and mushy inside. Yuck. It gets thrown away – which is such a waste.

So my son (I wonder if I can call him my Portuguese son since he now lives in Portugal?) taught me a rice saver tip. I put the remaining half cup of cooked rice in a sandwich size ziploc bag, roll it up, and put it in the freezer. When I am ready to eat a meal with rice, I remove the rolled rice from the bag, zap it on a plate in the microwave for a minute – and I have perfectly cooked rice that is almost as good as when it was first cooked. As a matter of fact, because it is so convenient, I now make 2 cups of rice, eat my 1/2 cup, and put the remaining rice in 3 separate ziplock bags with date. SO much easier than starting from scratch.

Rice Snob

I am also a rice snob. I only buy short grain rice from the Rice Factory where they mill my order on the day that I place my order. I am signed up with my phone number and get points that accrue for discounts. Love it!

I recently discovered their Yumepirika crop which is longer than their short grain and super delicious. Sometimes short grain rice is too short so this new crop is perfect for me and I am addicted.

And here is a tip: If you call in your order or order online, you get DOUBLE the points for your order!!! Woohoo!

I thought this was so cute. Wouldn’t mind if I got the wrong order here. I tried to embed from an instagram post but didn’t know how so instead, here is one by Neal Foard on YouTube. And he tells a great story.