Ah Nuts!

I’ve given the garden tour at the museum how many times when someone has opened a kukui nut for the guest to try. Not a big piece but just a tiny sample with the warning that it causes diarrhea. (that kept them in check) So I never thought that I could react to the nut itself.

This is a fake Kukui nut lei. But I think they are still pretty. The museum would like us to make real Kukui nut leis as part of our uniforms. But I’ve not been able to make it in on Saturdays to do this so I brought some raw nuts home to work on.

I was watching “Big Bang Theory” Laughing in bed surrounded by my four dogs happily cleaning out the Kukui. I was on the third one when I finely thought that the numbness around my mouth was getting too uncomfortable. Though it was not as uncomfortable as the fact that my throat was closing up. I stopped cleaning and went to the computer to find anything on reactions to it. All’s it said was that the meat could be poisonous if eaten raw. Well I knew enough not to be eating the meat. I’m thinking it was the fact that as I chipped away at the meat, inside, I would blow through one hole to make it come out the other end.

It must have been the nut itself that was making me react. So as I’m sitting at the computer trying to find a natural treatment my daughter comes home and finds out what I’m doing. It was around 7:30 PM and she had been in town with my grandson all afternoon and she was tired and cranky.

“Mom, do you think you need to go to the emergency?” With my abhorrence for doctors I said through the very tiny hole in the back of my throat, I don’t think so let me just see what I can find here.

Meantime my son-in-law is asking me to stick my tongue out, then to smile. I said, are you checking to see if I’m having a stroke? With that he said I guess you’re not. Then Nico got worried and chimed in with a scared look can something happen to grandma? So all this is going on when my daughter comes down and tells me to get off the computer and get dressed. She was taking me to the emergency. So I did and off we went with the tiny, little hole in my throat getting smaller. ( I thought, thank goodness I had showered and brushed my teeth.)

We drove to Pali Momi. My daughter was tired and cranky because she knew this was going to be an all night thing. I kept worrying about the dogs and telling her to call Alika to make sure they didn’t find the Kukui nut meat. Chris kept saying don’t worry about the dogs worry about yourself! I tried to keep up a cheerful conversation because I knew she was tired but It didn’t help.

Of course when we got there the place was busy. Chris dropped me at the front door and I went in while she went in search of parking. I gave the two women attendance my reason for being there. (All the time trying not to sound too pitiful yet so embarrassed each time I said I was blowing on the Kukui Nut. I had to tell the story about 7 times.) By now even my teeth were hurting. As I looked around I thought this is going to take for ever. But before I knew it I went from person A to person B and then to triage, which must have really made the guy sitting across from me angry as he was complaining about how long he had been there.

I felt I was one with my dogs at last wearing these tags

So now I’ve messed up my daughters night, and was helped immediately while the poor guy across from me hunkered down. I manage to upset people wherever I go. Anyway they put me in a room, hooked me up to an IV and before I knew it I was 3 sheets to the wind.

But I must say, before I sailed off I managed to notice that the emergency room ceiling was made of this beautiful Koa. Not only that, there were carved squares in the ceiling, each, depicting a different Pacific culture canoeing through the ocean. It was beautiful! I wanted to talk about it to Chris but she gets so upset with me and I think sometimes bored listening to me talk about Hawaii. But I thought I would give it a try. So I carefully maneuvered my arms and IV and turned to her. It was then I realized that my eyes were shut and I couldn’t see her. When I opened them I got a shock. She was sitting there looking at me and I was looking up at the stark white ceiling. Wow, what ever they gave me was great. I just turned on my back and said “I only have three more nuts to clean.” Actually it was only two but at that point I couldn’t count anymore.

After my daughter read me the riot act about touching the nuts again I went off to never, never land. We got home around 10:30 I immediately went to bed and the last thing Chris said to me was, “You make sure to pick up your medicine and take it!”

Waking up and feeling great I told my daughter I had no more symptoms. She  reiterated once again, before she sailed off to work, about the medicine. Well I picked it up after I went out to breakfast, looked at magazines, and yarn. I knew I was going to be tired after I took it so I managed to do what needed to be done. Don’t tell Chris, I cleaned the last two Nuts!

Raw Kukui nut and the tool I was using to hollow it out.

From the past

You know how old people are. They live in the past. And so from the past, a day in the life of me, the curmudgeon.

 

My daughter has me use the family van as I don’t have a car. Well it’s part of a deal we made but that’s not here nor there.

The Van is nice and I have been driving it for a few years now. But every once in a while her husband takes it for what ever reason, mainly to stuff all his cycling equipment in and that it drives nice. When that happens I have to use Chris’s car, a Ford Focus.

To say I don’t like her car is being very nice. Well I had to take it today to go to the museum. I was running late and thought I would take my tea and drink it along the way when i remembered I was taking her car.

Sitting inside her car is like sitting in her purse. She has cutesy  garbage cans, little bags here and there and tons of Kleenex boxes for the nose, disinfectants and hand wipes.

I used to drive an RX7 and it had more room then her car. I groaned as I realized I was going to be driving my daughters home away from home.

I stuffed my carry all that has the things I need for tours at the museum and my purse in the small space in the backseat. I put my lap top in the trunk and then got in and put my tea in the holder.

As I backed out, her country music station was on. Half way down the street I tried to read her radio that has pictures flashing, lines jumping up and down and little, tiny, microscopic buttons to push on the radio. None of which change the station. I pulled over and for 5 minutes tried to figure out how to find NPR. I could only find the damned classical station that so infuriates me that I often think of withdrawing my contribution to NPR as they play so much classical and jazz that… wait I digress. So I can’t find anything as the station won’t change and I decide to listen to the classical instead of the fuzzy sounds.

At the stop light I take a drink of my tea and the light changes and I go to put my tea back into the holder which is set into a cave like receptacle as it is so dark under the dashboard I can’t see. So I put the car in first and am blindly poking around with the cup to find the holder and there is no holder. I quickly put the cup in my left hand and try to feel around on the bottom.

I feel some kind of lump where the holder was supposed to be. I pull it out while I am trying to keep up with traffic in first gear and barely able to steer the car. I put it in second as I enter the freeway but I have to get this cup out of my hand as I can’t steer and there is no place to set the cup down. I reach down with my right hand pull the lump out of the holder toss it to the passenger side and deftly put the cup inside.

At last. In the back of my mind though, I’m thinking is that cup safe or is it going to fall out?  I reach down and it is sitting quite still. I’m driving for 20 minutes doing OK then I reach the museum go around the curve to get to it and my tea-cup falls out of the holder, on to my clothes and the floor and I am soaking wet. Now i can’t go to the museum.

I pull into a parking lot to assess the damages. Nope I have to go home. Ugh. I have to drive another 20 minutes listening to that music. I put on my glasses and try to figure out the station while I’m in the lot. Now, I’ve lost the music and I am listening to loud static as the knob to turn the music down does not work. I’m totally enraged by now and have called the car every name I can think of, I’m cursing Alika for his stupid radio and I am mad because my whole day has just been shot. I punch and punch the buttons hoping one will turn a station on but no luck.

I back out of the lot and give one last stab at the radio to shut it off and lo and behold it shuts off. I pull out of the lot trying to console myself with the fact that it’s OK to listen to silence and that I don’t need to be taking in the state of the world all of the time and that I can listen to my thoughts every once in a while. I turn the curve to get on to the freeway and the radio flies out of the dashboard and on to the floor of the car. Serious thoughts of ramming the car into the wall on the freeway pass through my mind all the way home.

When I arrive home I see what had happened. Her cup holder has another one inside of it that comes out. When I took my tea out to drink it, It stuck to the cup, fell back in and turned upside down and hence I could not figure out where the cup holder went.

I will not drive that car again. I will stay home and rot before I do. As I sit here writing this, there is one very happy being in this

room though and he is laying at my feet. Max. Thank god for him. I’m now calming down.