Liralen's Adventures Through Life

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.  We actually had a very good visit with her for the first few days. She was smiling every time we saw her, and she even had a morning where she ate an entire bowl of fortified cereal and we were able to take her out for a walk with Dad. But by the second to last day she'd stopped eating and even drinking.  I got my time with her. Alone. Without the protection of my husband and without the anxiety of my father or the incessant talking of my sister. Mom was asleep, fitful, restlessly so, but even when she woke she would nod off agai...

We started the day talking through what it was we wanted to do on our last day here. It was good to talk it all through and to figure out what it was we really wanted to get, do, or experience on our last full day here. We're going to have to leave first thing in the morning to catch our plane to Las Vegas, which should let us get on a plane to Denver. Hopefully there won't be another foot of snow delaying everything there... We had our breakfast out on our patio, the last of all the things we had bought to have for breakfasts.  Then, as usual, a hen came up to check us out while we were eating. We shooed her off, but a little later, another came to look through the glass at us while we were getting ready to go. All week, one of the hens has been coming up to the glass, watched us, and lain down on the welcome mat to watch us as she napped.  It's fascinating that the chickens like watching us as much as all the tourists love watching them. But I really wanted a picture of o...

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. Okay, yes, that's not a waterfall, but the first one was pretty far from the area that was set aside for viewing it, and it wasn't that great, and well... Magenta Bougainvillea! Yes, that was kind of the flavor of the day, honestly. We went and saw an old valley for the river there, that had, long long ago been a set of terraced taro beds, which Japanese farmers turned into terraced rice beds, and then modern day farming came in and turned it into beef cattle fields, and today you can see the pastures with cows grazing, but the grass shows the lines of the old terraced beds. That was pretty cool.  Beautiful scenery and a car to run to when it started pouring.  And I'll admit this was v...

We started the day by going out for breakfast. John had been making our breakfast most mornings, and he'd discovered a little cafe that was only open for breakfast and lunch in the second story of one of the buildings in our little town, and they had some intriguing specials.  So we woke up and walked over to the Olympic Cafe. We shared an omelet with Luau Pork, cheese, potatoes, and topped with a tomatillo sauce. It was served with home fries, and it was well worth getting. Most of the daily specials menu was what we'd been cooking for ourselves and eating all our fruit for probably a tenth the price of the restaurant food.  But the luau pork was super tender, the omelet itself was beautifully made, the eggs were tender and perfectly cooked. The melted cheese added richness, and the tomatillo salsa was tart and lovely. The home fries were good and garlicky, but I wished they'd crisped them better. Still... it was good, and the waitress was generous with the coffee.  The ...

First, Bali Hai. It was a picture I couldn't find yesterday.  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 t...

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. Our Lighthouse reservation was for 10:30 and our Garden reservation was for 2:00 to give us plenty of time to have lunch and get where we needed to go. We also made a lot of possible plans for how to fill that time if the travel conditions were good, given what we'd seen on the scouting trip, ...