Compost

About 5 years ago, my mom got really into composting. Like really into composting.

In March of 2011, my parents had just bought a condo in Mammoth Lakes. The whole family headed up there for a weekend to check out the place, and I came along to help pick out furniture, give my parents suggestions about what renovations needed to be done, and of course, to get a little skiing in. That year was an epic season, and this is what the walkways in the condo complex looked like:

So much snow!!!

My mom and I were in the kitchen when I noticed her putting uneaten egg yolks from hardboiled eggs into a Ziploc bag containing some other trash- vegetable peelings and coffee grounds that we had thrown away earlier. She then placed the bag into the refrigerator.

"What are you doing...???" I demanded of my mother.

"Oh, I am saving for the compost."

"You are not saving trash and bringing it back home."

"Why not?"

"Mom, that's just gross. Where are you going to put it? Is there not enough trash at home that you have to bring trash home from vacation?!?!"

"Oh the car is so large. We have extra room in the coolers because we eat the food."

"Mom, have you been digging in the trash to get this stuff???" I knew she had been, I had thrown those vegetable peeling in last night, and the coffee grounds that morning.

"Oh the coffee grounds are so good for compost."

"Mom, you can't do this. There is trash at home. You don't need to bring it back all the way from Mammoth!" I grabbed the bag from her and threw it in the trash.

She then ran off to the bathroom and when she didn't reappear after a few minutes, I began feeling guilty. I went to find her, and found her crying in front of the sink. I awkwardly put a hand on her shoulder.

"Since I hurt my knee skiing, I haven't been able to exercise," she sobbed, "I have been gardening and it has become very important to me."

In my mind, I sighed deeply. I was going to have to lose this one. I let her take home her bag of trash. And since then, I've let her take home many bags of trash. Whenever she comes to visit, she digs around for compost in my kitchen wastebasket and puts it in a Ziploc bag that she stores in my freezer until they go home. She especially likes to save egg shells and egg yolks- she tells me that they grind these up and feed it to the chickens. Lots of protein and calcium to make strong egg shells! I try to ignore the obvious weirdness of feeding hens parts of the eggs that they had just laid.

The last time my parents came into town, I tried to get my dad to take a photo of my mom's compost bag since they were staying in a nearby hotel. When I mentioned it, he started huffing about how she made him carry back trash from Europe when they visited Barcelona. "I refused! I throw the bag out at customs!"

The Tennis Ball Can, Part 2

Again, another story that I never thought would have a part two... (See Part 1)

I mentioned to my dad that once we had seen my mom pee into a tennis ball can. He was not really surprised. In fact, he told me about the time when it had gotten really warm in LA, and he started to notice an awful smell in his car. Given that the car is a disastrous mess, he went on a full scale search to find the source. Was it some food that had been left and spoiled? Some green juice that had spilled and was now molding over?

Nope! After an hour of searching, he finally found a tennis ball can in the side cup holder... full of urine.

Homeless van

So I know that this blog is about my mom, but both of my parents have really messy cars. The last time I went home, I got a few shots of the inside of my mom's car:

Cardboard boxes. Good organizational tools.

Woe to anybody who wishes to sit in the back seat

I've gotten on my parents' cases before about how messy their cars are. My mom's reply is always that it is the most convenient for her to have everything in her car because she can never forget anything! My dad says that they are rarely home, so they basically have everything they need to live out of their cars.

So when I got this text from my dad... well- I had to share.

On the loose!

I received this amazing photo from my friend the other day. Apparently she and her husband were walking around LA and ran across this...

Is it the same RV??? No... it couldn't be!

Theracane

A few years ago, my husband came home telling me about a self-massage tool that he prescribes for his patients: the Theracane.

Theracane. Available at amazon.com

He prescribes it for trigger point therapy for headaches with any sort of tension component, but given the $30 price point, he thought the thing was awesome, but not worth the price. I looked into it, and saw that the self-massage possibilities were endless!

A snippet from the owner's manual

So, I bought B a Theracane for Christmas. Except I couldn't keep it secret until Christmas, so he received his Theracane in November. Both of us enjoyed using it so much- and knowing that my parents also enjoy self-massage (my mom is constantly telling me to lie on top of and roll on tennis balls for my back because she does it and it feels "so good!"), we decided to buy my parents a Theracane also for Christmas that year.

Now, I don't know if it's a cultural thing, but sometimes I feel like my parents don't "get" presents. After we gave them the Theracane, they offered it back to us, saying that if we wanted two Theracanes at home, they'd be willing to let us keep the one that we had bought for them. Confused, but wanting them to enjoy the Theracane as much as we had, we refused.

My husband and I still occasionally use our Theracane- especially when we get wicked knots in our shoulders or necks from all the computer work we have to do as physicians. (Honestly, a greater proportion of time spent in front of computers than with patients- while they're awake anyways, but that's not really what this blog is about...) But I had forgotten about the Theracane we had bought for my parents until B went on his early morning walk around my parent's house and spotted this:

Theracane... holding back some old fencing???

B was so angry- we bought them a $30 gift, and it's in the yard holding some old rusty fencing in place?! He went to my mom and told her that we had given her the Theracane as a gift, and if she wasn't using it, he would take it back and use it in his clinic to show patients how it's used.

Expecting some sort of remorse or apology (or embarrassment???) for blatantly misusing a gift, my husband was surprised (or maybe- not surprised?) when my mom replied without any sort of remorse or guilt: "Oh sure, of course. I'll clean it off for you."

Tent Person gets a promotion

My husband and I were in LA for Memorial Day weekend to attend a friend's wedding. Since my parents live literally 10 minutes from the ceremony and reception, we really had no excuse to stay anywhere else but with my parents.

One morning, B (my husband) let me sleep in a little bit and took the kiddo on a walk around the grounds. He had a very interesting talk with my parent's housekeeper/cook/maid, but I'll save that for another post. B went to the RV to try to take some more photos for this blog. He opened the door, and... woke up the Tent Person, who was sleeping in the RV- on the floor. Surprised, B apologized for disturbing the Tent Person. Seeing that B had our little kiddo with him, Tent Person went on to warn B that there had been a bobcat sighted nearby, so not to take the kid out in the backyard past the pool.

And bobcats, oh my!!!

A little disturbed by this encounter, B returned and told me what had happened.

"What?! You didn't take a selfie with the Tent Person?!" I asked.

I asked my parents later if they knew that Tent Person was now RV Person, and indeed, they had given him permission to sleep in the RV. I suppose, a better use of the space than for storage.

Later on that weekend, I saw RV Person exiting the RV and heading toward the pool house with a large plastic bottle filled with a yellow liquid that I was quite certain was urine.

Well, hey- at least he's not peeing in the bushes.

Flossing

My mom is obsessed with flossing. She has a history of gum disease, so now she obsessively flosses after every meal, no matter where she is. There have been multiple dinners out at nice restaurants, where we've finished the meal and are sitting around enjoying each others' company... and then she pulls out her floss and starts going at it. There have been the same number of hisses under my breath at her admonishing her to go to the bathroom and floss if she absolutely needs to.

For some reason, my parents also seem to believe that using a piece of floss only once is a waste. It must have to do with their history of relative impoverishment in Taiwan before emigrating to the United States. So, my parents save their floss. Not kidding. When they come and visit, we will randomly find pieces of floss here and there. The car is another place where they enjoy flossing- and my mom in particular has been known (and seen) to be driving while flossing.

So, when we visited LA a few weekends ago, my husband and I couldn't help noticing in the car they let us borrow...

Floss???

Floss?!?!

And more floss!

Honestly, I was more surprised to see only three pieces of floss in the car! My husband and I even tried to search for more floss to take photos of.

So, imagine my delight when I saw this billboard in Utah:

DON'T Floss and Drive

I immediately took a photo of it (yes, I was driving, don't kill me- but it was just way too good to pass up) and sent it to my sister. The humor would have been lost on my mom.

Asian women can't drive

My mom claims that she is the best driver in the family, which is far from true. However, when we challenge her on this, she points out that she is the only person who has not yet crashed a car... which very unfortunately, is true. That is, it is true that she has never crashed a car into another car. She has crashed into plenty of inanimate objects.

Case in point: here's a photo of the side of her Prius.

Poor Prius...

When I moved to Utah, my parents kindly let me trade my car with my mom's 4Runner. However, there are dents on literally every corner of the car. Whenever I drive a new friend around, I always make sure to tell them that all of them were from when my mom owned the car- not from my own driving. I don't want people to think I'm a terrible driver too!

Mt. Whitney, part 3

This is the post in which my mom finally gets to the top! After 2 nights on the trail of bumming food and water off other hikers and hiking in the dark, she made it to the top. She ran into some guy with a nice camera, made conversation with him, and got him to take photos of her at the summit. She then forwarded me the email he had sent her with her photos.

The photos were named ASIAN155-ASIAN165.

I have to say that I was super impressed at the fact that my mom managed to summit Mt. Whitney. She kept telling us stories about how people were trying to climb too quickly and ended up getting altitude sickness so she'd see them charging up, and then coming back down. Slow and steady wins the race, she said. Slow and steady... and not having the appropriate permits for a multi-night hike up Mt. Whitney, but pooh on the rules- as I would say!

So she summited, came back down and picked up my dad where he was further down the trail, and sent me these photos a few weeks later, after the random stranger who had taken them had uploaded them onto his computer.

The end. Now onto the next saga...

Mt. Whitney, part 2

I did get these two videos, which hinted that my mom was indeed still alive.

Speaking of water... my mom told me afterwards that she didn't have enough water for the hike. So she ended up taking water from some other hikers on the trail. Fortunately, the trail is very well traveled, so she was able to bum water off plenty of other people. (And also food, because she didn't bring enough food either...)

I was confused, because my parents had told me before they left on the hike that they had gone to Sport Chalet and spent several hundred dollars on hiking supplies- including a water purification system. Didn't she bring that along?

Yes, apparently she had. But she had neglected to bring an appropriate container to use the water purification system in. D'oh!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day, Mommy. No matter how many times you get lost while skiing, we will always go pick you up.

Running with ... no shoes?

I got this by text the other day:

No shoes. I'm not sure if my parents have bought into the barefoot running thing or what .... ?

In which I am becoming my mother

My parents came into town one summer to visit, and we took my mother to Park City for a bike ride. I felt sort of bad for my mom, because we rented her a cruiser bike, and my husband and I were on our road bikes. It was a warm day, and we had a long, beautiful, but exhausting bike ride.

Mom and me posing on our bikes

On the way back, we stopped by to fill up on gas. I put the nozzle in the car and was waiting for it to fill when my husband jumped out the passenger side.

"Hey, you want get something to eat? I'm starved."

"Sure, fine," I agreed, knowing that my mom would probably give us grief for whatever we chose to buy.

We went into the store, bought a few snacks, and then hopped back into the car to go. I was driving off when a woman walking in front of my car stopped and stared at me, horrified, with her hands over her mouth. Puzzled, I looked in my rear and side view mirrors. 

Oh. SH*T. I had driven off with the nozzle still in the car. Gasoline was pouring out of the pump and splashing onto the ground. Completely embarrassed, I put the car into park and ran back to the pump, where I stopped the gas with my hand. The attendant came out to the car, and I handed him the detached pump. 

As I got back into the car to leave, my mom was sitting in the backseat reading something on her phone. "Don't worry, I've done that before," she said. "Except I drove all the way home with it."

Mt. Whitney, part 1

By this time, my mom had been training for her Mount Whitney summit bid for several months, as documented here, here, here, and here. Finally, near the end of the summer, my mom told me that she and my dad were going to head up north to Mount Whitney Portal.

Road to Mount Whitney Portal (Source)

I asked my dad if they would be planning to take it slowly to summit, and it turns out that my mom was planning to hike it alone and my dad would just hike part of the trail. I thought it probably wasn't a great idea for my mom to attempt such a long hike alone, so I gave my dad a call.

"Hi Dad, are you guys on your way up to the Mount Whitney trailhead?"
"We are go to Mammoth. Stay there one night."
"Mammoth? Why?"
"It close-by and Mommy wants to get used to the heights."
"The heights?"
"For the thin air."
"Oh, you mean the altitude?"
"Oh, yes, the altitude."
"Do you think it's a good idea for Mom to hike this alone?"
"No, but you know your mother."
"Mmm... can't you try to slow her down by having her carry more stuff or something like that?"
"We already try that but I prefer take my time so she just go ahead. She try to meet up with the church group."
"The church group? You mean Kay Maser's group? Oh, that's great!"
"Yes, with Kay. But your mother cause so much trouble they don't want her but we go to try to meet them up."
"Wait, so is she going with the group? Or she isn't?"
"No I tell you they don't want her but she go anyway to meet them up. But she already get kick off the group."
"Okay... so she's going to try to meet them there and join them anyways? Even though they don't want her to?"
"Yes."
"Ooooo-kay..... Wait- don't you need a permit to hike Mt. Whitney? Did you guys get permits?"
"No."
"What? But you have to reserve those way in advance, I thought!"
"We go to day of and sometimes have permits extra."
"Oh."

Then I got these videos via email:

Only my mother would try to power a summit bid with mixed greens, fruits, and salmon.

I got busy at work, and then about a week later, realized that I had never heard back from my parents and that I should probably find out if my mom was still alive...

Lost in the Woods, Part 4

I promise, that my mom does actually make a bid for Mount Whitney, and I will indeed tell you about it.

But first, I was digging through my email and noticed this one with the subject line: "SGV Hikes (Covina, CA) - Meetup". And below, the email itself:

And who said my mom never learns?!?!

Lost in Vienna

This past September, my parents traveled to Europe.

First of all, imagine what it must be like traveling with my mom to a different country. She insists on bringing a hot pot so she can continue cooking in hotel rooms. She asks her helpers to pack all sorts of fruits and vegetables for them, despite the family's repeated experiences of having to eat everything at customs or throw it all out upon arriving at the destination country.

And my poor father, now he has to travel alone with my mom.

My parents continued to use their iPhones in Europe, despite whatever exorbitant fees they ended up paying. So once in a while, I would get text messages from them. But imagine my surprise (or should I have been surprised?) when I received this one.

DAD: I cannot find mom please help.

What???

ME: Where are you? What happened? Did you try Find My Friends?

DAD: We are in Vienna. Mom get mad and run off. Her phone off.

ME: Dad, I can't help you from here. Is she at the hotel? Try the local authorities, and if they can't help, the US Embassy.

....

Twelve or so hour later, I texted him again.

ME: Did you find mom?

DAD: Yes.

I got the full story later. Apparently, they were at a cafe, and even though it was busy, they were loitering about and taking their time. Since my mom is super cheap, she was slowly sipping at a glass on wine (at this point in the story, I exclaimed, "Mom was drinking wine?!?!") and my dad was nursing a beer. The waiter was fed up with them taking up space and not buying anything, so brought my dad another beer even though he hadn't asked for it. My mom, furious at my father for ordering another beer, stormed off. She even turned off her cell phone so my dad couldn't reach her. But they found each other again eventually, and I wish I could tell you that they lived happily ever after.

I mentioned this story again a few months later, and my mom denied that she had been drinking wine. So who knows what actually happened...

Wednesday Photo-day

My dad showing off high fashion hiking wear in his Cerveza jersey and his button-down shirt stuffed under his cap for addition sun protection. Oh, and those are Transition lenses- he wore them for my wedding and subsequently looked baller while walking me down the aisle.

Oh yeah.

My mom, also exhibiting the latest trends in hiking-appropriate clothing: a tennis skirt, my old P.E. shirt from junior high (somebody has been raiding the bags I've set aside for Goodwill!!!), and a button down blouse. This trend of wearing button down blouses as sun protective gear has led to my sister and I buying my mom actual UPF button down shirts- one of the few gifts that she actually uses. However, she will often misplace the shirts we've bought her and go back to wearing filmy long sleeved button down blouses- as in the type most people would wear in combination with a nice skirt to go to work.

Happy Wednesday, folks!

Drought

As many of you know, California is heading toward an epic drought.

Snowpack comparison between 2013 and 2014. (Source.)

You should all know that my mother is doing her part to combat drought in California. I called her the other day while California was getting "lots" of rain and she was bragging about how she had large wastebaskets out in the backyard and had collected several gallons of water already.

Why waste the water coming off your roof?

See, because I had sent a spy out to LA a few months ago, I already knew that my mom was collecting rain water. In fact, she is so serious about this, that she hired somebody to dig huge holes in the backyard so she could put water collection barrels to collect the runoff from the roof gutters.

My family lived in California during the great drought of the late 1980s and early 1990s, so we know how it's done. How are you doing your part to conserve water?


(Disclaimer: This post is entirely tongue in cheek. My mom doesn't give a crap about conservation. But she DOES care about money- at least when it has to do with the water bill (not when it has to do with airline baggage fees, though...) And water gets expensive during a drought. The best example of this: whenever we traveled as kids, my mom would always take a bath every night because she didn't have to pay for water. Things haven't changed. The first time she visited me at my condo, she first asked if we pay for water, and we don't- the HOA does, so she took a bath every night she was here.)

Lost in the Woods, Part 3

My mom hiking in nice smoggy LA

As chronicled here, and here, my mom got this crazy idea to train to climb Mount Whitney, but since she is unable to get out of the house early enough or use a map, she leaves late and gets lost.

Remember when I made my mom promise that she'd never do it again?

I was on call in the Surgical ICU one night when I got another text message from my dad. Again, my parents had gone out hiking and had headed out in the late afternoon for a long hike. My mom had forged ahead without my dad, and it was again, many hours past dark, and my mother was nowhere to be found.

Fortunately, my dad did have cell reception at this trailhead, since I was taking care of sick patients and unable to coordinate the search efforts from Utah again.

Around midnight, Search and Rescue was called out, and searched briefly... and around 2am, I got another call from my dad, saying that they had called the search off. The weather was good- in the low 60s, so if my mother was still out there, she would be fine through the night.

Fine through the night?! But what if she had fallen and gotten hurt??? Or attacked by a mountain lion??? But there was nothing I could do. I continued taking care of my sick patients and tried to ignore the fact that my mom was out in the middle of the wilderness in the middle of the night.

Finally, we were on morning rounds when I got a text from my dad that they had found my mom. Relieved, I let out a "Oh thank God" in the middle of rounds, prompting my attending to pause rounds and look at me.

"Oh, my mom's been missing all night and they just found her."

"JESUS, Alice, that's been going on all night and you haven't told us?!" He had been on call with me all night.

I guess I hadn't explained that this was quickly becoming a commonplace occurrence.

I called her a few hours later and she got upbraided by an irate and post-call daughter for doing exactly what she had promised not to do. Apparently she had tried to head back early enough (apparently NOT early enough...) and had gotten lost in the impending darkness. She had found a group of hikers who were camping out for the night and joined their campfire until day broke so she could head back down to the trailhead. But I got this explanation a lot later. I was too mad (and too post-call) to listen to a thing she was telling me the first time around.

The RV

For some reason, more than 10 year ago, my mom decided to buy an RV. She had dreams of traveling around the States with her own traveling kitchen- despite the fact that the only RV vacation we had ever been on together was a disaster.

So we bought an RV.

The RV, parked outside our house.

The thing is, my mom never followed through on planning any trips in the RV. So it sat in our driveway for years. The furthest it's been driven is from our old house to our new house when we moved. So what do you do with an RV in your driveway?

First off, make sure you put cardboard under the wheels. In a pinch, cinder blocks or scraps of 2x4 would work too.

Next, I'm sure you were previously unaware, that unused RVs work very well as storage space. Which is precisely what the RV has become. A large, somewhat portable, storage unit that sits in our driveway.

Perfectly normal, right?

Lost in the Woods, Part 2

Remember that time when my mom got lost and ended up atop her "own" mountain? Well, undeterred, she still continued doggedly to train for her Mount Whitney summit bid. (Warning: long but funny story ahead with no photos- sorry!)

------------------------------

It was well past bedtime (read: 11pm for this surgery resident) in Salt Lake City when I got a text from my dad in California.

DAD: Can you please call search and rescue. Your mom and I go on hiking she is not come back.

Huh?

I called, but he didn't pick up. I tried again. And one more time. Finally he picked up. He sounded frantic.

"Dad? What's going on?" I asked.

"Your mother!" He proceeded to tell me a long story about how "you know your mother!" She had picked out an 8-mile hike but they hadn't gotten to the trailhead until 4pm. She and my dad had headed out together, but again, because my dad hikes too slowly, my mom had ditched him and forged on ahead. Once it started getting dark, he had turned around and headed back to the trailhead, where he had waited for her for hours well after dark. Getting worried, he had tried to call for help, but didn't have any reception. He had driven several miles from the trailhead just to get reception to text me. He had tried to call my mom too, but either she didn't have reception either or her phone was dead. He wanted me to call Search and Rescue so he could head back up to the trailhead and wait, just in case my mom turned up.

"Okay, Dad. Where are you?" I asked.

He then proceeded to describe how they had gotten there, but couldn't tell me a name of a trailhead or any mile markings. I Google Map'ed the location he had mentioned, but couldn't see any marked trailheads or hikes on the map. But he said that one of my mom's hiking friends had told her about the hike. I called him back again, but he didn't pick up. He must have already headed back to the trailhead.

Sigh.

So remember Kay Maser from the previous story? Thankfully, her email signature had included a phone number. So I gave her a ring.

"Hi... is this Kay? My name is Alice. I'm Jan's daughter? I'm really sorry for calling so late..."

"Yes, this is Kay."

"So, my mom is still out hiking and my dad can't find her. He's been waiting for her at the trailhead for a while but doesn't have any reception. He said that somebody from her hiking group had told her about the hike? Would you happen to know where she is?"

"Yes, I suggested that she do The 8-mile Hike* today. What time is it? 11pm?! She's still out there???"

I explained how my parents had started off late again, how my mom had ditched my dad again, and how now my dad had been waiting for my mom for hours. Kay said that she would try to help. I got off the phone with her and began Googling the phone number for Search and Rescue in Southern California. No luck.

So I dialed 9-1-1. Sort of an emergency, right?

"9-1-1, what is your emergency?"

"Hi, I need to reach Search and Rescue, but not in Utah. In the LA area? My mom is out hiking and she hasn't come back."

I got transferred back and forth, with all parties being confused as to exactly under whose jurisdiction my mother was located. Finally, I was on with Search and Rescue for the Wrightwood area and they said that they would dispatch a team to look for her. Kay had reached them too- the officer I was speaking with said that another woman was also searching for an Asian woman measuring about 5'4".

I had spent more than an hour on the phone, worried sick. My phone beeped, and I looked at it- another call from my dad. Telling the officer to hold, I took the call.

It was my mom on the phone.

"MOM?!?! Are you okay? Where's dad?"

"Dad is here, he is driving so I am on the phone."

"What? Where are you?"

"We coming down the mountain now in car."

"So Dad found you? You're okay."

"Yes, of course. He always so over-reacting."

"MOM, I CALLED SEARCH AND RESCUE THEY ARE HEADING OUT TO FIND YOU!!! ... Hold on."

I switched the call back to Search and Rescue. "Hi... sorry. That was my mom. She returned to the trailhead and she and my dad are heading home now. I'm really sorry for the trouble... could you please tell Kay that she is okay... Thank you so so much for your help. Yes. Um, thanks again. And sorry. Goodbye..."

I hung up, switched back to my mother and then proceeded to thoroughly berate her for worrying us sick, keeping me up half the night on the phone with Search and Rescue, and made her promise never, ever to do this again- and that if she were going to go hiking, that she needed to plan ahead and start early.

"Yes, yes yes. Next time, yes," she promised. "Your father, he always is over-reacting. No one need to Search and Rescue."

I banged my head against the wall a few times, thanked God that my mom was safe, and then finally went to bed.

*I unfortunately do not remember the name of the hike or trailhead. =(

The Chicken-y Cutting Board

My mom has been long forbidden to touch anything in my kitchen, for a variety of reasons going back since I was in college. So, when they come to visit, usually either myself or my sister is watching her like a hawk to make sure she isn't trying to do something like sneak vegetables into our soups or put my knives back without cleaning them.

One of these visits, I was preparing a chicken, sausage, and white bean soup. It's a great wintertime slow cooker recipe, and I was trying it for the first time. The ingredient list called for fennel, which was a vegetable I had never cooked with before.

The strange vegetable known as fennel.

Being most familiar with Asian cooking throughout childhood, this was an ingredient I had never cooked with before. Thankfully, my cookbook had thoughtfully included a section on how to prepare a fennel bulb for use. As instructed, I cut off my fennel bulb's leafy frondy stalks, and discarded them in the trash. I then took out another cutting board and cubed the chicken breast. As the chicken was browning, I took my chicken-y cutting board and knife and stuck them in the sink to be washed.

"Ach! What's this?" I then heard my mom exclaim. She was looking in the trash bin.

"What?" I asked.

"This! So much in trash- so wasteful!" She held up some fennel stalks, having picked them out of the trash.

"Mom, that's fennel. That part isn't edible. You can cook fish on top of them or use the leaves for seasoning, but I don't have any plans for that before they'd spoil," I explained. Puzzled by the prospect of throwing so much greenery away, I had looked it up myself before I had started cooking.

"Mmm..." she muttered.

I turned back to cooking, turning the chicken cubes to brown and adding in more vegetables. When I turned around again, my mom was on the other side of the kitchen with her fennel stalks, using my chicken-y cutting board and my chicken-y knife from the sink to cut the fennel stalks into pieces. And then sticking those pieces raw into her mouth.

"MOM!" I yelped. "You can't do that! I cut chicken on that cutting board with the knife!"

My mom looked up. "What? Why not?"

Incredulous, I asked, "Why not?! Haven't you heard of Salmonella?! You're going to get sick!"

"Nooo," she scoffed. "I have a strong immune system." She continued working at the fennel with the knife and putting pieces of it in her mouth.

"Mom..." I started.

"Ai, you worry too much," she interrupted me.

I sighed and continued cooking, thinking to myself that this was yet another reason why she was not allowed in the kitchen.

Salmonella! (Source.)

As a side note, she didn't get Salmonella. Lucky for her. Although in a perverse way, I wish she had, because then I WOULD HAVE BEEN RIGHT!!! (But she would not have learned a lesson from it, because she is incapable of learning from life experiences...)

The Poopy Tomatoes, Part 3

Who'da thunk there would be a part three to this story? (See parts 1 and 2, here and here.)

My parents came to visit about a month ago, to see their new grandson and to spend the holidays. I was still on holiday break, but my husband had gone back to work already.

"See any interesting cases at work today?" my dad asked my husband.

"Not really..." my husband replied, but then told them about a twitter feed, @radiopaedia, that shows an interesting radiology finding once a day. Then he had an idea. He showed them this CT scan:

CT scan showing numerous cysts from cysticercosis. (eMedicine)

My parents were duly impressed. He explained that these cysts are from the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium.

Scolex of Taenia solium. Shudder. (Source.)

Humans become infected when they eat raw or undercooked pork. Infected hosts then shed ova in their stool, and when these ova are ingested, the parasite can then go to the brain and cause cysts which can then lead to seizures.  This parasitic infection is hence continued by the fecal-oral route since the tapeworm's eggs are in the infected human's feces.

Life cycle of T. soleum. (CDC)

"And that's one reason why you shouldn't fertilize with human feces," my husband concluded.

"But we don't eat pork," argued my mother.

"You don't have to. When somebody else eats contaminated pork, it's their feces that contain the parasite eggs. When you fertilize with feces, the eggs contaminate fruits and vegetables that are grown in that soil, and when you eat those fruits and vegetables, you can get the parasite."

"But the vegetables are on the plants, and the soil is on the ground."

My husband then pointed out that the ova can be spread simply by insects landing on the ground and then on the produce.

"It must be so rare. I have never seen this before."

"Actually, it's pretty common. And why would somebody who presents with acute seizures or severe headache and encephalopathy present to you?" my husband questioned. My mother has an outpatient Internal Medicine practice. "They are going to be in the ER being seen by neurology."

At this point, my dad started getting very concerned. "Maybe we should get CT scans to see if we have it."

"Well, we stopped fertilizing that way 6 months ago," my mom claimed.

"Doesn't matter," my husband said. "The soil is already contaminated."

"Well, how do we get rid of it?"

"I don't know. I'm not a farmer!" My husband sighed. "See, this is why I'm worried about bringing our son to your house in California. Also, it makes me concerned that you guys don't use soap to wash dishes, so all of the dishes are basically breeding grounds for bacteria."

"Oh, and soap kills bacteria?" my mom scoffed.*

Waaaiiiiit a second. Back up. Apparently my mom started a Hepatology fellowship, but then switched to Infectious Disease. Infectious Disease. Granted, she didn't finish the fellowship because she became pregnant with my little sister. Maybe they don't learn about parasites or the benefits of SOAP until the end of the fellowship, because my mother doesn't know about either!

My parents finally left later that evening, very disturbed and hopefully will never fertilize with human poop again. (I am still not going to eat anything from that garden though...)

*sidebar: technically, regular soap does not "kill" bacteria, but allows it to detach from our skin/dishes and then get washed off with water.

Lost in the Woods, or Mommy's Helicopter Ride

My mom is painfully goal-oriented. This is definitely an admirable trait, and is responsible for how my mother has gotten far in life. However, I would posit that she is goal-oriented to a fault. In 2012, she decided that she was going to climb Mount Whitney. I am not sure how she got this idea, but I think it started with a group of women at her church who decided to train for and climb Mount Whitney together.

Mount Whitney, photo from Wikipedia

So this story is difficult to tell, because I got all of my information about it in fragmented form, but it started with an email from my mom entitled "Fw: Mommy's Helicopter Ride" with this attached video:

Huh???

One day later, I got this email written by a Kay Maser* forwarded from my dad:

Fw: Another Story About Mommy's Helicopter Ride

So, it was brought to my attention that my message Tuesday evening seemed to have some urgency.  I meant to fill you all in, but the night became very late.   Sorry to keep you in the dark...

Yes, there was a sense of urgency in my message, but I was driving and trying to 'text' ... 

After missing a gathering for a hike and hikers being unwilling to wait due to impending darkness, Jan [my mom] (yes, our Jan) said she was on her way and would start up the trail, planning to meet us on our way down.

When we didn't cross paths, I'd assumed she decided against the idea.

After a stop at the grocery store, I returned home to find a text message from Jan.  The message had been sent nearly an hour before and requested that I call rescuers because she was stuck up on top of the mountain and couldn't get down. 

There I was calling the Sheriff's Search and Rescue, while trying to reach her husband to see if he'd heard anything... while driving like a bat out of hell back to the trailhead. Search and rescue members were already on the mountain and in communication by cell, her husband 

So - upon arrival, there was Jan's husband, Peter (who had been hiking part of the trail with her), a nice young man that assisted Peter back to the main trail when Jan ventured further, and Sheriff volunteers. 

A very exciting (and cold) evening which ended in Jan's personal helicopter ride from the top of 'her' mountain to a nearby park. 

Thanks Cathy, for the number (and offer to come join in the wait).  Thanks Carol T for the call and for letting everyone else know that I'd received the information. 

See you all next week when Carol F. leads us! 

Easter Blessings to all!

Kay Maser

So let's hit the high points, shall we?
1. My mom seems to be physically incapable of getting anywhere on time, so she misses the group meeting at the trailhead.
2. She ditches my dad because he hikes too slowly for her.
3. She gets lost.
4. She ends up at the top of a different mountain. (Or "her" mountain, as she referred to it when I called her about this fiasco.)
5. She can't get back down.
6. Search and rescue gets called.
7. And they have to rescue her by helicopter.

My. Mom. Is. Amazing.


*name changed for privacy reasons

The Chihuahuas

Winter 2008, I called home to tell my mom that I was going to drive up from San Diego to visit. "Oh good," she had said. "You can meet the dogs."

The dogs?!?!

Let me take a step back and explain. My parents don't understand having pets, mostly because they find that they have little utility and are expensive. To them, buying food for a pet to eat is akin to throwing money down the toilet. Although my sister and I did manage to beg our way into owning a few pets as children, pets were never viewed as part of the family. For instance, when our pet bunny got weird stuff in her ears, the solution was not to take her to the vet, but to "let her go." Since we lived up in the foothills, this really meant "let the coyotes or mountain lions eat her." As kids we didn't really understand this. Eventually, we did beg our way into owning two cats: one of which we still own. She lives at my parent's house, and my parents only begrudgingly care for her because we remind them to and cry if we come home and see her doing poorly.

So. Dogs. Completely out of character, and without months of begging from their children. I was perplexed.

"Dogs, Mom?!" I exclaimed. "Um... what type? How many?"

"Two of them. Small dogs."

"Two dogs?? Like, what breed? Are they mutts?"

"Oh, I don't know. But they are small."

"Why in the world did you guys decide to get dogs???"

"You know we have the groundhogs in the backyard. Bad. They ruin the lawn." This was true. Last time I was home, I had noticed the burrows and piles of dirt in the backyard. My mom had even had somebody drive a car back there so they could try to pipe exhaust into their tunnels to drive them out, but this hadn't worked. "A patient tell me a good way to get rid of groundhogs is to have dogs. They run across the ground and the sound scare the groundhogs away."

That's right, my mom had gotten dogs because she wanted to get rid of groundhogs.

I came home to visit, and discovered that my mom had gotten two yappy, mean, and obnoxious Chihuahuas.

Unfortunately, not the actual Chihuahuas. The ones they had looked meaner.

Where had she gotten them from? Apparently, somebody was giving them away at the park. And where were they staying? In the pool house. (This was before the pool house was being rented to the Tent Person.) When I was home, I went by the pool house to meet the dogs. It was the middle of the winter in California, which isn't cold by any sort of standards, but definitely is cold for two short-haired Chihuahuas living in a poorly insulated structure without heat. Or blankets, for that matter. The two pitiful dogs were shivering in a kennel placed on the cold cement floor. And my poor cat was terrified of them and was nowhere to be found.

My sister and I told my parents that this was a terrible idea and that if they were going to have dogs, they ought to take care of them. We then left after the weekend, and the next time I visited home, the dogs were gone. I didn't ask any questions.

Finally, a few years later, I found out that my mom was getting her hair done and her hairdresser mentioned that her children wanted dogs, so she had given them away.

"Better than your dad's idea," she told me, "to drive somewhere and drop them off far enough away so they can't find their way back."

The Poopy Tomatoes, Part 2

I never thought that there would be second part to this story. But then I asked my sister to take pictures of various things when she went back home to LA, and returned with these photos:

White, plastic material?

Laying around in the dirt?

DIAPERS, perhaps?!

That's right folks, apparently they aren't putting them in a pot, punching holes into the pot, and burying them in the ground. My mom is just putting my grandma's dirty diapers on top of the dirt in her garden, spraying them off, and letting them decompose there. You know, quickly, like plastic does.

I AM SO GLAD I DIDN'T EAT THOSE TOMATOES!!!

Sun Goddess

My mom went skiing this past week, and when she showed me pictures of herself, I was a little confused.

"You're wearing a sun hat? Where's your helmet?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm wearing my helmet too. See?" she pointed out her helmet perched on top of her sun hat.

"Mom, why do you need a hat? Aren't you wearing goggles? Wait, where are your goggles??"

"I am wearing goggles, they are right here," she pointed to her goggles slung around her neck.

"Wait, so your goggles are under your helmet? How does that even work???"

"Oh, it's good. It works well."

My husband then pointed out to my mom that if she can fit a sunhat AND her goggles under her helmet, then her helmet doesn't fit correctly. Which explains why she always hurts herself when she falls and hits her head while she's skiing. Awesome. But then I wonder... my mom is always telling me (and her patients) to go out in the sun without sunblock on to get enough vitamin D. To which my husband and I always tell her that that is bad medical advice because sun exposure without sunblock causes skin cancer and wrinkles. So she refuses to wear sunblock because she wants to get more sun, but she wears a ridiculous sun hat under her helmet to avoid sun. Hmm...

Anyways, somebody please design a ski helmet with a wide brimmed visor so Asian moms can ski and maintain their porcelain complexions- even if they won't wear sunblock and are still trying to get more sun in order to increase their vitamin D levels.

What Not To Wear

When I was in medical school, I submitted my mom and myself to the TLC television show, What Not To Wear. Like nearly every Asian American kid I knew, I was terribly embarrassed by how my mom dressed. And compared to the people I saw on What Not To Wear, I knew my mom would blow them out of the park. Plus, I was in med school and about to become a professional myself, and didn't have anywhere near a professional wardrobe, so I suggested to the show's producers that they could run a mother/daughter episode featuring both of us.

Like most immigrant mothers, my mom is incredibly frugal, especially with clothing. The problem with my mom is that she can't resist a great deal- and she has NO idea how clothing is supposed to look on her. In addition, comfort is key (more on that later), so she likes to wear clothing that is meant to be form-fitting at least 2 sizes too large.

At any rate, I never heard back from the show's producers, BUT yesterday I did get some choice photos of her outfit!

This is what my mom wore when she went to the mall with us yesterday.

I think my mom is saying something about something being strong here.

 Let's take a closer look at her idea of matching fabrics.

This was a shimmery sheer material.

This was another shimmery sheer material.

If that wasn't bad enough, my husband then pointed out that my mom's skirt was SEE-THROUGH. Basically the material was so lightweight and cheap that even with the slip included with the skirt, when she was backlit, you could see ALL THE WAY UP her legs. Oh my.

However, the icing on the cake was when she pulled this vest out of her purse and put it on top of it all.

Mom putting on her vest.

Yes, a synthetic, vinyl appearing, ill-fitting vest. My sister reports that my mom was bragging that she got this vest for cheap at a local thrift shop. I have a suspicion that my parents went to Deseret Industries, where my sister reports they spent $150 on what I suspect is a lot of junk. (My mom did discover some LED candles, which she then bought and brought over to our house to show us. I'm not sure why.) Oh, but back to the vest. Let's take a closer look!

Yes, those are laser cut polka dots.

So, since we were at the mall, and the baby was blessedly asleep, we went to J.Jill and bought my mom some new clothes. I wish I had a picture of her new outfit, but when she came out of the dressing room, my husband exclaimed, "Wow! She looks like a normal person now!" I burst out laughing and people in the store started staring at me.

She then accidentally sent a text message meant for just my father to myself, my sister, my husband, my two sister-in-laws, and my parents-in-law saying:

Miss you Honey, they are the fashion police and help me buy one pant, one sweater and one small jacket .