Pure Manaʻo

If you ask my family, they will tell you that I am very pake in many ways. I hate paying full price for anything. When I shop, I go straight for the back of the store where the sales and clearance items are. The only thing better than not having to shop is getting something at 70% off. I love to go to Vegas, but I never gamble. Putting $100 into a penny poker machine is just poho (wasteful). I could have bought groceries with that money. I live right in town, but I carefully plot out my errands so that I don't go back and forth or cross my own driving path. That would be a waste of gas. At the supermarket, I write my list according to row so that I don't have to go back and forth in the aisles because my time is money. If I forget something, too bad, make do without. However, there are certain things that I think are worth paying extra for: freezer strength Ziploc bags, Bocca meatless burgers, 0-point tortillas, Kleenex with lotion and double ply Charmin toilet paper. In fa...

Chocolates Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda I've been doing pretty good on my Weight Watchers journey, but I'm being undermined by Christmas chocolates like these gourmet dark chocolate confections in their own little cubicle, packed in bubble wrap and designed like jewels. Some people are alcoholics, drug addicts, shopoholics. . . I'm a chocoholic. I shouldn't eat any. Cold turkey is the only way for me to survive. Like all addicts, having even one leads to another, leads to another (you get the picture). So this Christmas, the chocolate fudge, led to the truffles, led to the chocolate chip cookies, led to the hot cocoa, and the Buster bars at Dairy Queen. Help!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. . Isaiah 9:6

Tea Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda I absolutely hate water. Mostly because, well, it just tastes like. . .water. But in WW (weight watchers), part of the program, and my weekly challenge to myself, is to drink water. . . LOTS of it per day (6 - 8 cups). Most people can drink that amount in the morning, but I could last on that amount for the whole week. My body is used to being dehydrated. It's my training method for survival in case of nuclear disaster and the water supplies are contaminated. They say that humans will die within several days without water, but my finely honed, water-starved body can last for months. Anyway, since I have to drink "water," I drink lots of tea (one cup equals 1/2 cup of water because of the caffeine). This is my latest tea obsession flavor and I drink lots of it because the stuff I tend to like usually is seasonal or on its way out. This vanilla caramel truffle comes in these cool pyramid shaped loose tea bags and they smell heavenly, l...

Hubby made two kinds of fudge this year. One tastes like a homemade PB Reece's cup and this one is a chocolate fudge with chopped pistachio nuts. This shouldn't be a problem since we did say that we wanted to make gifts this year so we made corned beef and yam lau lau, mini chocolate and cream cheese truffles, candied walnuts and pecans, and those dreaded fudge monsters. The problem with making all these goodies is that eventually, we run out of people to give these gifts to, so now I'm stuck with two pans of fudge in my freezer. What's more appalling is that not only are they precut into nice little pieces, but they keep calling me! I'm trying to keep busy so I don't think about it. AAGGH! Anyone want some fudge?

I have not talked to too many teen girls in school who have not seen the Twilight movie. Even my high school son saw the movie with his girlfriend and she was watching it for the second time. She is reading the books, however, and he is adamantly NOT. Do movies like this help to encourage reading? I must admit that I have a list of students that are waiting for my Twilight series and they include both girls and guys. But after Twilight, like the Harry Potter books, the books tend to grow in size. These books with their black covers have been mistaken for Bibles. They are not light reading. I finished four of them in a week, but I didn't sleep much. Still, if kids are reading, it's a good sign, even if I REFUSE to pay $9.50 to watch the movie, I do like that it gets kids to read. My true test of a book's worth is whether or not it gets stolen from my classroom. New Moon has already been stolen from my classroom. Other books that were stolen in the past: Speak by La...

One of the latests posts on the ASCD In Service blog talked about the possible death of the the novel in the secondary classroom. I remember in high school I actually took a novel class where the teacher gave us a speed reading test in the beginning of the semester, and based on that we were given a number of pages that we had to read per week. When we finished a novel, we had to have a conference with him and maybe write a paper. During class, we all faced each other in rows and. . . read. I think my number was 250 pages per week, on top of my other work from all my other classes, so I ended up reading a lot of trash novels and none of the heavier classics on my "to read before I die" list because I needed to make my pages with minimal brain strain. In my other senior English class, I took short story and poetry, so not too much reading in that one either. I must say, I did not get very far on my list before I got to college and decided to major in chemistry. I did not stay...

The gondoliers in Venice are eating breakfast as the city floods, and as I go through the pictures on the Time.com photo essay site, I'm always struck by the resiliency of people to just keep keeping on. I think journalism is not just about highlighting the plight of others, I think it's also a way to rile people up, to get them off their bottoms and take action, but really, with the immediacy and visual and aural stimulation of the instant news, I feel more numb than horrified, scared or even motivated to do anything. Living on an island, I've always had that dream that the oceans are so high that we live on the tops of sky scrapers, and the majority of the buildings are under the water. We have to work our way up in order to get to see sunlight, or risk living in the murky grey, green and black of the ocean. So when my husband told me that Venice was flooded last night, I thought of people hanging out on the tops of buildings, jumping off of ledges to get on the boats. ...

Christmas tree Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda My husband bought himself a large ticket item while I was in San Antonio. It will probably be his Christmas, birthday and anniversary gift for the next couple of years. Was I surprised? No. He's been talking about getting a stand up paddle board for months, and after 21 years, I know that once he gets an idea in his head, the result is that the thought will eventually become reality. Long story short, he set up all my trees and brought up all my boxes of Christmas stuff before I got home from Texas. I hate shopping, standing in line, wrapping and all crafty/homemaker pursuits that are associated with Christmas. However, I love my Christmas trees an.d I love, love, love my ornaments. The only thing I love more than my ornaments are the icicle lights outside my house and the ones on the 2nd floor lanai that stay up all year long. So when Ken put up my trees and tested my lights, I didn't care what he bought, I had a job to do! Th...

photo.jpg Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda I'm finally on my way home, and yes, I did figure out how to blog on my iPhone, but wow, busy, busy, busy. Ok, I'm on a free internet computer at the Houston Airport, so I need to type fast. According to the countdown clock, I have 17:15 and counting down. 5 Reasons to come to San Antonio 1. The food downtown (sorry, it's probably great around other parts of San Antonio, but I've never been here with a car) is FABULOUS! I don't know if it's TEX-MEX, but yum! My favorite so far is Boudros. I like the guacamole for two that they make right at your table, and their steaks are wonderful. I also like the wild appetizer with the polenta. Another place that was good was Zunis they have this soup with beer, it's one of a kind. 2. The boat tour along the river - if you're a history buff, an architect buff, or just plain niele, this boat tour is pretty cheap and very informative as long as you get the right gui...

No laptop Originally uploaded by cathy.ikeda I'm hoping that this will work, but it's basically emailing the photo to my flickr account, then setting up my flickr so that it upload to my blog. If this actually works, then all I have to do is practice my no looking texting technique. My son says I can't look at the keyboard, I just have to feel the keys like some zen experience. He must have been cheat texting for a long time.

1. Type this blog with any kind of speed that's not considered geriatric. 2. Figure out how to put pics on this blog if my pics are not uploaded to an Internet site. And finally, 3. Type this blog without looking like a lame-o old lady who does not have her multiple finger cheating on my test taking abilities down. Still, since I'm on way to San Antonio, my husband says why do you need to take your computer, you have your iPhone? It can do everything you want it to do. So, in order to save space for books I'm going to scrounge for free, I am without my laptop. I have 4 days to figure out how to get my iPhone to work for me so that I too can be an iPhone weiner.

For the second round of the 16 Bars competition, the rappers and slam poets get a topic, so tonight the topic was "Wiwoole (the retail store) is the bomb." They got one week to write and memorize. It's not really what he writes about, but that was the purpose - to keep them on their toes. Ahi made it through again, so will post soon!

Sitting in front of the TV on Tuesday and listening to Obama's victory speech really brought home the idea that this is indeed a historical event. The media threw that idea around, but in my lifetime, I didn't feel that this election was historical in the way watching the Twin Towers fall on CNN or seeing the Challenger blow up was historical. The message is not unusual. We've heard it before, but said now, said in this way, with these words strung together like a Baptist sermon, with the pulse of the crowd as they stood in silence, save for the call and response, "yes we can." That's history, "our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared." Hundreds of miles away, whole continents of people that watched or listened to his speech shared breath with those people watching him, and the message really resounded. . . "while we breathe, we hope."

The older the kids get, the busier we are. Some nights, there are at least three of us on separate computers - but there's one conversation that always takes place on Monday, Wednesday and Friday: "Have you read the latest Nemu?" We are all in love with the local web comic Nemu Nemu about two magical plushie pups Anpan (like the bread with bean paste) and Nemu (like nemutai - sleepy). Anpan is the more kolohe one and Nemu is the sweeter one. Anpan loves pizza and Nemu loves cookies and grill'd cheese sammich and PB&J. They are totemo kawaii (too cute)!

I'm not very good at producing readers, except for my youngest who had a goal to read a million words by the end of his school year and he made that amount by the end of September. Hey, he's a 5th grader, not much social life at that age. Still, even if the other two aren't reading for lifers, it seems writing and poetry run in the family. Ahi participated in a local event called 16 Bars (he tells me that's a typical length of a freestyle rap). He's not a rapper, but he likes to write slam poems which could sound like rap, but they aren't restricted by a certain beat and they don't necessarily rhyme as much. Long story short, there were 4 boys from Kamehameha in this round and they were all poets (boys + poets = one happy English teacher - even if I only taught 3 out of 4 of them). The guys were judged by the emcee and one mystery judge, and audience response was factored in. Ahi was one of the two that moved on, but the other two have a chance to battle o...

Our family is on the Wii Fit train, which just means that we found an excuse to play the Wii on school days. Basically, the Wii Fit is a plank or board that you stand on and it weighs you, tracks your BMI and basically tells you that you're either obese, overweight, normal or underweight. Warning, if you have a large TV (ours is pretty decent), in large letters, this machine will show your weight and BMI. If you're like the majority of my family, it will also tell you "that's obese!" in a cutesy, irritating, little girl voice. Not only that, but indignity upon indignity, your mii (your character on the game) will turn fat!! Once you are done yelling at the tv ( "no S&%#, you think I do know I fat?!") it encourages you to train by choosing exercises like yoga, strength, aerobics and balance "games." The only person that is normal in our family is Ahi, and lazy buggah actually figures out how to cheat so that he is the only one not breaking...

Although I never want to talk about it, and I won't again, I'm psychic. Not psychic in that Allison Dubois way (the character in Medium, who happens to be a real person), but in the way that most parents, especially moms, are psychic. We are so in tune with our children that it allows us to know some things even though we are normally clueless. I don't know why it's more prevalent in mothers, but in my experience, it is. My mother has keyed in on me whenever things have been especially horrible for me. My anguish has woken her up. But she's not the only one. One afternoon my husband and I were outside and we both heard our son's voice call, "mom!" It was the voice of pain and fear. I looked at him and said, "did you hear that?" My husband said yes, it was our oldest boy who was at boy scout camp. We got into the car and started driving from Hilo toward Honokaa. When we got the phone call, Isaac was already on the way to the emergency roo...

One of my colleagues sent me this link. Dalton Sherman is a 5th grader who talked to 20,000 educators in Dallas. When the occupation keeps getting slammed, when the budgets keep getting cut, educators need to believe that what they are doing matters. And it does.

Ken and Pono, our youngest, come home from cub scouts and right away Pono says, "Mom, dad says I have to ask you." Me: Yes? Pono: What's afterbirth? (Of course I'm eating dinner, but Pono says, Dad said it's the sack for the baby. Did it hurt? Me: Did having you hurt? Yes. Did the afterbirth hurt? No. Where is this coming from? Is that what you guys were talking about at cub scouts? (Ken's the pack leader - I know he was spending this afternoon trying to figure out what he was covering tonight, but come on.) Pono: You know that chant about Papa and Wakea? Me: Yes, (now Ahi's getting involved in the conversation from the other room, I hear him chanting) O Wakea noho ia Papahanaumoku Hanau o Hawai'i he moku Hanau o Maui he moku . . . Pono: The end of the chant says that Kaho'olawe is the afterbirth. I wanted to know what that was. Ahi: He 'ula a'o Kaho'olawe - oh yeah, I guess so, afterbirth. Me: H...

Finally a teen girl heroine who is not obsessed with boys, parties, gossip and money! ABC family's newest series, Samurai Girl is about Heaven, a Japanese princess (yeah, yeah, she has money, but it's not about that) that loses her brother when her arranged marriage in San Francisco is attacked by ninja hired by yakuza. She can't trust her own family and must reach out to an old friend and some new ones in order to survive long enough to avenge her brother's death and fulfill her destiny. Go girl power! Yes, the actress is not Japanese, she's Chinese (that bugs my husband, but that's Hollywood), but she is not afraid to kick some booty. We need more of these types of heroines with great diva shoes and the know-how to wield a sword.

1. Listen attentively for 10 minutes Presenters: welcome to your worst teaching nightmare. Teachers learn how to be antsy from their students. If you have a lot of middle school teachers, expect them to act like middle schoolers, ADHD disorders and all. You have 10 minutes to hook us and we want to get up, move and be active every half hour. 2. Talk to our neighbor while the presenter is still talking This practice is a natural way for teachers to use each other as a sounding board for the connections they are making to their own teaching (or they're just gossiping). If you can't tell the difference between productive noise and idle gossip, you need to go back to the classroom and practice. 3. Text and read posts When speakers talk about another author, or another concept, we get on our smart phones and look up the links so we can expand our knowledge immediately. (Or we're blogging or catching up on our email). Don't be offended. Only kick us out if we don't realiz...

Summer Olympics 08 is over and there's definitely a hole in our TV line up after 2 weeks of sleeping late and waking up early to watch the Olympics. I'm not really a sports junkie, but I do love the drama, the personal stories and the beauty of exertion, triumph and sorrow. Yes, I'm proud to be an American, but I'm more proud of being a Hawaiian (I mean in location, not in koko). It seems like Hawaii has its own sports factory. Perhaps it's our year-round sports-playing weather, but I think it's a tribute to these moms and dads who volunteer to coach in all-play programs like AYSO, little league, bobby sox, etc. For a small group of islands with limited access to outside competition, we do really well on all levels - from little league to the Olympics.      Maybe we won't do as well in the 2010 winter Olympics in Whistler, but let's support our athletes, buy the kalua pig tickets, watch the high school and pop warner games, so that when the 2012 Olympics...

Diva shoes Ken trying on my diva shoes surrounded by my other diva shoes. No fit! People around me this week have been having really bad days, bad seconds, bad hours, bad weeks, bad months, bad years. . .bad decades! So what if you have to work with morons, or some idiot keyed your car, or the neighbor's dog keeps pooping in your yard, or no one seems to know how to change the toilet paper roll except you. . .life's tough! After years of taping the Oprah show, subscribing to O Magazine, listening to the podcasts, I've learned a little bit about not getting your panties in a bunch over the stupid things that other people do. I realize, after thousands of dollars worth of biblio and tv therapy, that I already had the solution for all this strife. Everything I needed to know, I learned on the Olomana Girl's Home softball field. Lesson one, when you have pilikia, never take it personally. You are AWESOME and people are HATERS! Like crabs in a bucket, people will always try...

Michael Phelps , Beijing Summer Olympics '08 I am an Olympics freak. I love the Olympics, from badminton to basketball, synchronized platform diving to singles synchronized swimming. Yes, there is synchronized swimming singles. The Olympics captures all our athletic dreams. When I was in high school, I watched the '84 Olympics and decided that in order for me to be an Olympian, I would need to find a team handball club in Hawaii. I looked it up during my senior year and the national team practiced in Oregon. I never did get to Oregon, but when I watch the Olympics, I still think maybe I could have, if I would have. . . right. Now that I'm older, unless hanafuda were an Olympic sport, I don't think I could qualify for anything. How about full contact origami? I have anger issues, I could succeed in that. Actually, I've been more interested in watching the parents of the Olympians. I notice that when Michael Phelps wins (so far he has 11 gold medals), he looks for hi...

Ok, it's not a battle, but after being married for 20 years, I realize that there are some things that fall into the "mom's job" category, and there are some things that are strictly dad's domain. Mom's job is to find things. For 20 years I have lived in a male dominant household. The fact that the majority of the toilet seats in my house remain in the down position is a testament of the power of the one and only alpha female. However, what I can't do is teach my children (and my husband) how to do what I call "mom looking" versus "man looking." I don't need to explain this for the moms. They know exactly what I'm talking about. The guys are slower to catch on. I'll type s-l-o-w-l-y. Here's a typical "man looking" conversation: "mom! (or Cat!), where's the ______ (insert anything from socks to the car)?" "It's in the _________ (insert my instructions like refrigerator, garage, o...

I'd have to recheck with my mom, but I'm pretty sure I was a good kid, even as a teenager. I never got detention except a few times in the hs dorms as a freshman until I figured out the system. I never got suspended and I definitely never had the principal calling my parents from school. In fact, I think I was quite angelic as a teenager, and the pride of my parents' eyes. I played sports, drove responsibly, made curfew, had honor roll grades, and was basically a gift. I'm only saying this because I just got a call from the principal and my son, a junior now, already has detention for his hair color. It's not that he's never had detention for his hair. He's quite a regular at the cafeteria for his hair being too long (bangs over his eyebrows, or touching his collar, or covering his ears, or color, etc.) The difference is that this is the FIRST day of school. OK, so I knew when I got the message from the principal that it would probably be his hair. See, I wo...

I think it was Sandra Cisneros that wrote that diseases have no eyes, they just pick and choose. Today 's news is about the death of Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon professor that became a spokesman for living despite his battle with pancreatic cancer through his last lecture . He was 47 with three little kids and I wonder why these things happen? How do diseases choose their victims? Why is the timing not convenient? What are we supposed to learn? As I write this, a family is standing by as their mother also is dying from pancreatic cancer. She too will leave three children behind. Her children are not as young as his, one is a sophomore at Harvard, one will graduate from high school this year and one will be a high school freshman. Still, they are children too, her babies, and they will lose their mother soon. I had all the Carvalho children in my 8th grade English class and they were all brilliant and kind and positive. The influence of their parents, and the love and accep...

I am in a love-hate relationship with the other woman. Her name is Magellan and she has this very calming voice, even when she is giving us the wrong freaking directions. Magellan, our GPS, is actually my husband's girl. She has replaced me as the official map reader and navigator on our travels (travails). This other woman was supposed to curb our stress level and keep our bickering to a minimum. I, as the map reader like to have all the instructions plotted before we leave the parking lot, my husband likes to start up the car and go, which starts us arguing right away, because if he takes the wrong turn out of the parking lot, I have to throw out my directions and look at the map again. Magellan has ended those arguments, but even if she doesn't snap at my husband or give him the silent treatment, she is not always perfect either and this other woman has changed the way the two of us navigate our way through life. Before Magellan, my husband and I had to up our learning curve...

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman My review rating: 5 of 5 stars We went to our timeshare in Keauhou this year for a mini vacation, but the only ones on vacation were me and my youngest, so we rented a car and drove back and forth to Hilo for work and baseball. The four of us listened to Golden Compass along the way and we all couldn't wait to get back in the car to see what Lyra was doing and how she was going to escape Mrs. Coulter and find her friend Roger. Ahi usually just sleeps when we get in the car, but even he stayed up to listen. My husband and I talked about this hoopla following the movie, on how Pullman was an atheist and this book was against the church. I read the trilogy a while ago, and yes, there is a Catholic church type of organization with the kind of power that they had in the middle ages, but I didn't see it as atheist then or now. View all my reviews.

Dear AT&T, Why do your plethora of plans have to be so complicated? I have the family plan. Just my teenager and me. He has unlimited texting, I have nothing right now because I don't know how to use my phone for anything besides dialing and answering. So, to lure me into upgrading my ghetto, but perfectly usable phone, you enticed me with the iphone hoopla and not only expect me to pay the cheaper $199 price, but you don't have them in stock, so I have to order it, wait my one month AND decide on a plan, because an iphone is a smart phone, so the options are different. If we go with a family plan, then it doesn't make sense for me to have an iphone unless we all have iphones. However, with the unlimited stuff plan, it doesn't come with texting, so you have unlimited except for texting. Teenagers are all about texting. My other option is to get the family plan for more than my contract price, AND pay an extra $30 per month for the iphone. Your rep. tells me to feel...

Despite the articles on how long people waited for iphones yesterday, or how messed up the server was, or how some people were sent away at the end of the day without a new iphone, I still want one. No, I crave one. I get back to Hilo on Monday. Do I think my local AT&T store by Ben Franklin will have one saved special just for me? Probably. . .NOT. Still, I'm going to be there on Tuesday morning to check anyway. Why do I want an iphone? Because then I can use brightkite the way it's supposed to be used. How ridiculous is that? The more ridiculous thing is that my husband knows that and he's still letting me try and get an iphone. If I find out that I can't do brightkite on my iphone, then I will be truly pissed off. I think that cell phones should look like mini phone receivers, and be made specifically to call people and receive calls. I don't think that cell phones should do anything else, like make light for commercials, take pictures of girls' ...

The problem with being married to a foodie is that our life, both on vacation and off, is a singular pursuit of food. Food is not sustenance. Food is an obsession. It is a one-track mindedness, a quest, a voyage, and a way for my husband to follow his whims. For a control freak like me, this is not very conducive to planning ahead. When we are on vacation, like now, I like to have my whole day mapped out at least the night before with a pretty solid itinerary of the week already down. After 20 years of marriage, I do allow for my husband's whims because of the one-track mindedness. Still, with internet and our handy portable gps, things just get more tiring, which leads back to fatness. Yesterday, it was Chuy's for lunch. Why? Because he met someone on Britekite from Houston and they started corresponding about food. When we got there, I asked him what kind of food they served. His answer. . . "I don't know." That means we had to order a lot of food to figure out ...

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs My review rating: 4 of 5 stars If you're looking for a female bonding book, Friday Night Knitting Club was a great read. It centers around single mom Georgia Walker and the people that frequent her yarn store in NY city. The characters are likable in their flaws and strengths and it's a great airplane or beach read with all the right elements: humor, romance, intergenerational wisdom sharing and sorrow. View all my reviews.

I love airplanes, small ones, big ones, cramped, spacious -- airplanes represent freedom and travel and anticipation and yearning and sadness and loss. Despite rising airfare and ridiculous charges for EVERYTHING, I still love flying. Last night we left Kona Airport for Houston via Phoenix on US Airways. It wasn't too crowded, so my husband actually got to move to another seat so that we could all spread out. Sweet! Except that 2 1/2 hours into our flight, the captain comes on and says we have a mechanical problem and we're flying back to Honolulu, another 2 1/2 hours away. Yes, safety, I'm all for safety so this is actually THE GOOD. US Airways rocks. The people on the phone are not cocky like Hawaiian Air (yes, my son works for Hawaiian, and I tell him all the time that they are rude, obnoxious and cruel to their customers), the people on the ground (contracted from Hawaiian) are pleasant and accommodating, and the agents in Honolulu were very helpful and calming. We got...