Author Archives: Yvonne

Trader Joe’s at 72nd Street Upper West Side closes, so Trader Joe’s at 92nd Street/Columbus becomes an even bigger zoo

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Late April, I heard the unfortunate news that my neighborhood Trader Joe’s at 72nd Street and Broadway had plans to temporarily close for about four months for renovations. I usually go to Trader Joe’s every other week and use that as some outdoor steps time for me, so I was sad about this. Now, the closest TJ’s to me is on Columbus between 92nd and 93rd Street. While technically, I still can walk, that’s a much longer walk, which means it will take more time, which means that it will require a bigger chunk of my day to go. And I usually try to go on a weekday late morning when my calendar is lighter to avoid the most insane crowds and lines. So until about September, I will need to more carefully plan my Trader Joe’s visits and be more strategic about when these will happen. And as such, I will likely go less frequently, which also means I will end up buying more items per visit. So my plan is to walk up there, get my groceries, and take the bus back down.

Today was the first day I did the trek up. The walk was nice; I always like walking outside in the mornings, especially now that it’s getting warmer with summer here. But as soon as I stepped into this Trader Joe’s at 92nd Street, I felt a bit overwhelmed. I saw people whizzing and running by me, a few in actual circles. Carts were nearly crashing into each other left and right. I lost count of the number of people who either bumped me with their cart/shopping basket or themselves. There was no real, clear flow of “traffic” in this store. Many of the shelves were already cleared out or near empty. I wanted to stock up on about two weeks’ worth of Greek yogurt, and my timing was just such that I was able to snag the last two quart-sized containers — pure luck. I’d never been in this store location before, and so I wasn’t used to the layout and got weirded out when all the cereals and cereal-adjacent items were not in the same area. The only thing I like more about this store layout versus my neighborhood TJs is that everything is on a single floor. I’d never liked the 72nd Street “two floors” situation. While that does help with traffic flow, I never like the lack of natural light on the lower level.

After I got all my stuff and paid, I was happy to be able to have the bus stop just a block away. But then when I got on the bus, there was barely any space for me: multiple people were there with walkers and strollers…. or their own shopping bags. I eventually got a seat in the back, but getting on was really uncomfortable with my three packed canvas bags full of groceries and trying not to step on anyone’s feet/stroller/walkers.

While I will definitely do this trip again in July, I am not sure I can go here every other week until September. That TJs location is a zoo with many accidents waiting to happen. And if that doesn’t already increase my stress level, the bus situation will also not be fun. Who would have thought about the bus being packed at around midday on a Monday?

ChatGPT Premium – Therapist, trainer, dietitian, work assistant, everything now

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Chris just got us a good deal on ChatGPT Premium, so instead of relying on my free version of Claude AI to answer my life’s deepest and most important questions, I am now deferring to ChatGPT Premium for what is obviously very, very premium answers. So I have a few chats that are completely disorganized and mislabeled in ChatGPT now, but they are mostly following along these themes: family travel/food/itinerary planning, workout regimen design based on my 40s status/perimenopause prep/desire to lose subcutaneous fat/build lean muscle, and a meal planning/prep plan to go with said workout regimen. I also ask ChatGPT questions about things that originally confused me, like why can collagen powder not be considered a “complete protein” that “triggers” the body to realize I want to build lean muscle (UGH, what a bad purchase given my goals). And also, why can’t my old pea protein powder be a “complete protein”? As you can see, “complete proteins” are very much top of mind the last couple months.

And then here and there, I have some work questions, so I have to ask ChatGPT to help me with research, changing my tone in a message, or drafting a message that I really do not want to write myself. So, ChatGPT really has become like my therapist, my work buddy, my trainer, my dietitian — almost my everything now. How can I even live without this thing now?? And just a year ago, I barely even used this thing!

Preschooler observations and negotiations

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Chris has noted a few times that he loves negotiating with Kaia. Kaia will rarely accept one option; she needs to have multiple to choose from at all times. So sometimes, we have to throw in some “options” for fun.

Some recent examples include:

Kaia asked Chris for an iPad. He told her no, when you’re bigger, you can get one. I can’t remember the exact age, but he said something like, “When you’re 18, you can have one.” And she responded back and said, “No, no no! I will get one when I am 31,” to which Chris was super positive about! And then she told me later, “Daddy can buy me an iPad when I’m 31!” And I looked at her and said, “Yes, babe! That will definitely be possible!”

And onto another topic: I have a pretty quick makeup routine on days I wear makeup. During our Honduras trip, she always liked to watch me put in my daily contacts (which I wore for three days) and then my makeup. She asked me at what age she could also wear contacts, and I responded and said in an ideal world, I hope she never, ever had to wear contacts. She didn’t quite understand this, so I relented and said she could wear them at 18 if she needed to. She seemed okay with this.

Then she asked, “Mama, can I wear makeup when I am 19?” I looked down at her and smiled. “Of course you can, Pookie! Nineteen would be perfect!!”

Kaia has also been very loving and caring, checking in with me daily on my “boo boos” from when I scratched my thigh and butt from the coral reef in Roatan. So she’s been asking to see them every day and also asks if she can help me put ointment or ice on them. I tell her that I put the ointment on myself each morning and evening, but she also insists on applying her bedtime ice pack (this is her thing) to my boo boos for a few seconds to “help” me heal. It’s very sweet, so even though I don’t need it, I humor her and let her do it. And then after she takes the ice pack away, she asks me while peering up with big, wide eyes, “Does it feel better now?” To which I always respond, “Yes, Pookie, it does. Thank you for helping mama!”

A lot is tough about this age and every age of child-rearing, but I do love these cute, sweet moments so much.

Signs of a fancy breakfast

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Yesterday morning, Chris and I were invited to a new parents welcome breakfast at Kaia’s soon-to-be new school come September. It would be a mix of staff, current, and new parents so that we could all have an opportunity to get to know one another. I showed up at the event this morning before Chris did since he had to do school dropoff, and I took a quick scan of the breakfast layout. It had a lot of what I expected: a mix of bagels and spreads, pastries, yogurts, fruit, coffee, and tea. But what caught my eye immediately was the fruit spread: it was all raspberries and blueberries.

You know you are at a fancy, ultra-premium breakfast event when you see the fruit spread, and it’s all berries. We all know berries are some of the most expensive fruit (at least, here in the U.S.). There was no melon in sight, which I personally define as “filler fruit” that most caterers would use to increase the volume of fruit on a serving platter while decreasing their own costs. It’s usually too much cantaloupe and (god forbid) honeydew, and they are usually so bland that they end up just being sugar water.

The second sign this was a premium breakfast event was what Chris noticed when he took a look at the juice bottles in the ice buckets: there were bottles of cold-pressed Sumo citrus mandarin juice. These are the ultra, ultra premium, expensive, and hard to grow mandarins that we got gifted at Lunar New Year. I’d never seen this type of juice at any event or any store — anywhere. I ended up buying more and requesting Chris buy more of these. While he admitted that they did taste amazing and were worlds apart from regular mandarins, he asked me if I really wanted to continue buying these because I’d probably make our household go broke (half joking, half serious).

The event was enjoyable and worth the time. It’s clear there’s a great community here. And it’s also great to see that we’re paying for premium food for these events through our tuition money. 🙂

Longer days, warmer weather = happier self

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Ever since I was young, I have always disliked cold weather. The dreary, grey overcast days of the Richmond District of San Francisco always made me feel miserable. Then, when I made the decision to move East for college, snow was fun for about a hot second, and then it settled in to me that this atrocity would last about three months every year. Overall, I’ve really embraced the distinct seasons (especially spring, summer, and autumn), but I always have a general dread for winter because of the shorter, darker days and the extreme cold.

So when it starts warming up in late spring, I always get excited. The days are getting noticeably longer, and I can feel myself just feeling happier in general that I can look forward to lots of sun, natural light through our windows, and not needing to wear layers every day. I am the happiest when I can walk out my front door and not put on any layer on top – no zip-up, no windbreaker, no coat — nothing (other than a hat)! This time of year, I am definitely my happier self.

When you get home from a trip, it’s time to properly wash your whites

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After a trip, I have always been one of those maniacal people who need to unpack everything right away as soon as I get home. I want all the dirty clothes put in the wash. I want all toiletries put away. I need all souvenirs or edible things separated and stored properly. I also want travel things like travel bag compartments, totes, backpacks, and luggage put away, stat. The idea behind this is that I want to relax as soon as possible and be in a calm state of mind, and I won’t be able to have any of that unless everything dirty gets cleaned, and everything that needs to be put away is put away.

Well, I’ve added one additional thing to my list ever since I decided to start embracing white clothing a year ago: if I bring white clothing with me, I NEED to set aside time to wash them properly. This means whipping out my trusty Jamaican blue soap bar, scrubbing visible stains with the blue soap, soaking in a bucket, rinsing, and then throwing into the washing machine. It’s an additional step, but I am getting a satisfying kick out of this process. It really only applies to several garments of clothing, plus my white slip-on AllBirds, but I always love the feeling of looking at my whites after they’ve come out of the wash and laying them out to air dry and hopefully further be bleached whiter by the sun.

Maybe it’s a sign of getting older that I’ve embraced this little menial and annoying task that I avoided like the plague for so much of my life. I think the last time I intentionally bought a pure white garment was maybe over ten years ago. And before that, it was in college. And I barely wore those pants from over ten years ago because I didn’t understand how to clean it properly then, and I got so mad at how the stains would never come out in the washing machine on their own. Now, I take real ownership of my whites and do my best to keep them super white! I’m sure my former Jamaican nanny would be proud!

“Camp” setup at our San Pedro Sula hotel

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Once Kaia had outgrown a crib and pack-n-play, when traveling, we’d ask the hotels for a roll-away bed for her. All hotels accommodate this, of course, but occasionally, you get a special surprise at some properties.

We stayed at an Aloft hotel in San Pedro Sula. Aloft is known for their Camp Aloft, which encourages kids ages 2-12 to have fun by providing them with their own unique Aloft experience. They call it a “bed in a bag with special treats!” The last time Kaia had something close to a tent experience was when we had the Lovevery “fort” setup, but she quickly outgrew that because that was more for babies and younger toddlers. She’s also hidden in the tent at Chris’s aunt and uncle’s place in Melbourne, which she loved. So when we arrived at our hotel room on Saturday late afternoon, she squealed with delight when she saw her little tent bed. After taking off her shoes, she immediately ran over to the bed to hide in her tent. She was obsessed with the little windows where you could play peekaboo. I love that she still loves peekaboo… and I still wonder how long this peekaboo love will last?!

The hotel manager also tried to spoil her by giving her a full-sized bag of M&Ms and a bag of Skittles… which Chris immediately confiscated. I think by the end of the trip, he may have let her have two M&Ms and two Skittles max. I love these experiences that Kaia gets when traveling, and I love seeing people treat children well. I hope she can remember at least some of these experiences when she’s older, as at the age of 4, this is the earliest time of my life that I have very vivid memories of. And even when she isn’t able to remember, we will have lots of photos and videos to document and share with her so she can relish in the fact that she was so spoiled in these travel moments.

My very first cacao fruit — in Honduras

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Few things excite me more than discovering new food, and especially new fruit, while traveling. I love that different countries and and climates have different fruits that can only be grown in certain areas. Some people are upset by this, as they believe that globalization should enable anyone anywhere to get whatever produce they want anytime they want, but I think that’s just unrealistic given how delicate and sensitive some of these fruit and vegetables are. Indian mangoes are a great example: while many are being exported to the U.S. from India, it’s a huge gamble which of them are actually intact once they make it to stateside. Many would have rotted in transit, and they all need to be sprayed to prevent infestation. The one time we bought a box of Indian mangoes in New Jersey and brought it back home, I still remember one of them never ripened, while a couple others were rotted and black. There’s a no-returns policy on these, so it’s fully at your own risk!

While in Guatemala on our day trips to Antigua and Lake Atitlan, I talked to our driver about cacao fruit, and he had mentioned that locals did buy it to eat the fruit around the cacao beans. We saw it at a few fruit stands there, but the road conditions and traffic were unpleasant, and so I never asked our driver to stop. In Ecuador in July, our driver who took us to Quilotoa Crater Lake told us that one of his sons absolutely loves cacao fruit and that it’s one of his favorites, so he gets it just for him. My interest was piqued; I needed to try cacao fruit at least once!

So when we passed several street-side vendors selling the fruit, I asked Javier our driver if that was in fact cacao, and he confirmed it was. So we stopped by a fruit vendor, and from there, I was given a cacao and chose the ripest possible mango (out of likely over 20 that were ROCK hard!) given we had less than 24 hours left here. I just spent over $2 USD on local Honduran fruit, and I was extremely, extremely thrilled.

Back at the hotel last night, I asked if someone from the kitchen could help me cut the cacao in half. I got it back and scooped out all the cacao seeds (beans), which were covered in a thin, custardy white layer — this is the fruit! Chris and I shared the fruit since Kaia seemed extremely uninterested in it, and I didn’t feel like pushing her given it was a potential choking hazard. The flavor was sweet first, then a little tart, with a custardy texture and finish. Chris remarked that he wished there was more flesh to eat, which I agreed with. The more I thought about it, the more the flavor and texture reminded me of the cherimoyas we had while in Peru. Cherimoyas are a lot less work and far more flesh to eat, though! The act of sucking off the flesh from around the beans — this was definitely reminiscent of the mamoncilla fruit we ate while in Colombia and El Salvador. Those seeds were extremely large and round (super big choking hazard!), with a thin, bright pink flesh.

Fruit adventuring while traveling is one of the best things. Now I can finally say I’ve tried cacao the fruit!

A day spent exploring the surrounds of San Pedro Sula, Honduras

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If you look at places to see and what to do in San Pedro Sula, you can tell almost right away that it was never a place built with tourism in mind. There’s virtually zero tourism infrastructure. People obviously live there. Many businesses are located and/or headquartered here, so people come for business travel. But when it comes to sightseeing, most of that is found outside of San Pedro Sula, at least an hour outside the city, where you forget “urban” even exists because of how green, jungle-like, and rugged the area outside of it is.

We didn’t want to rent a car or drive in mainland Honduras, so Chris tried for a while to find a driver who could take us on a day trip, but it was challenging. Some of the drivers he found and reached out to didn’t seem legitimate. Others were quoting such astronomically high costs that they would even be absurd if we got quoted those numbers back home in the U.S. Finally, and unexpectedly, we were able to enlist the hotel manager’s help ahead of time in finding us a safe, legitimate driver who charged a reasonable amount to be our driver for the day outside the city. We were warned he didn’t speak any English, but this was fine because we’d give him our desired itinerary ahead of time. And of course, there was always Google Translate (what a savior!).

We visited a number of interesting places today that made us forget about the city completely. Our first stop was at D&D Brewery and Restaurant in the Pena Blanca area. It’s this little brewery/restaurant/inn that you’d totally overlook when driving passed it because it’s so tucked away. It’s physically inside a rainforest close to Lago de Yojoa (Lake Yojoa). Given they are a craft brewery (that uses mountain spring water), we got a pineapple and raspberry beer along with a slice of very light and fluffy chocolate cake to appease Kaia. We also walked around the property, which really did feel like we were right in the center of a jungle. It was a really beautiful spot with friendly service despite the language barrier.

Our next stop was at Los Naranjos Eco-Archaeological Park, which contains pre-Columbian ruins of a major Lenca city dating back to 800 B.C. That is even older than Copan, the famous Maya ruins also in Honduras that is likely better known. Copan dates back to 400 A.D. There, we got to walk along a long wooden boardwalk that curved through these huge wetlands at the edge of Lake Yojoa. I loved all the unique bird songs we got to hear while walking through it — how beautiful it would be to be able to fall asleep to those nature sounds at night! I also appreciated how relatively covered we felt by the endless large trees from the UV rays (I am officially in my forties now, after all…).

Just past midday, we went down to Lake Yojoa and took a calm, relaxing boat tour of the lake and surrounds. This time, our driver Javier came with us, and he occasionally pointed out interesting things to us, like the famous Goblin’s Cave and the turtle shaped island in the middle of the lake. While on the boat, I was reminded of this time last year when we were in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, for a day trip. And the mountains in the distance here and the faint mist over them reminded me of that time. There are so many beautiful bodies of water in the world to see and explore!

We passed so many street side fruit vendors that I had to take advantage of this. So I asked Javier if he could stop by one so I could check out some fruit. I ended up getting a local mango and my very first cacao fruit — all for 70 Lempiras; more on this tomorrow!

A typical lunch by the lake will include fried fish, fried fish, and fried fish, all caught from the lake, with a side of freshly fried plantains in the same oil. Chris managed to find us a teeny tiny little quaint spot overlooking the water called Comedor Mayra, where a very nice lady was able to communicate with us and get our order in. I asked if she had juice, and though she didn’t have any, she was eager to get it from a nearby fresh juice vendor once we told her what we’d be interested in. We ended up having a hibiscus and mango juice. The fish was delicious, as were the tostones and the juices. And I’m still in shock from how cheap the meal was: an entire whole fried fish with tostones with all the cabbage and pickled vegetable fixings, plus two large fresh juices for just 250 Lempiras — that’s not even $10 USD!

Our last stop for the day was at Cataratas Pulhapanzak (Pulhapanzak Falls), meaning “white river overflow in Mayan. “Pulha” as it is known is 43 meters/140-feet tall, located on Rio Lindo about an hour’s drive outside of San Pedro Sula. The area served as a pre-Hispanic center, likely overlapping with the Mayan civilization. Before the Spanish arrived here, the falls were deeply revered as a sacred, mystical site by the indigenous Lenca people. Now, it’s fully set up for tourism, with the option to do cave walks, behind-the-water splash adventures, river tubing, and even multi-course ziplining. There is a big “Pulha” sign for photos with the large waterfall in the background, complete with a large platform to which you can walk up to get the perfect photo opp. It felt like mostly locals and maybe domestic tourists when we went. A lot were getting into the water and swimming in calmer, shallower areas. The whole area felt like a big family-friendly outdoor hangout, and a very natural one at that! I do not recall seeing a single obviously foreign tourist there other than ourselves. The falls were beautiful, and the mist went much farther than it appears it would. We had a feeling that we probably came on a lower flow day because the actual fall itself was relatively small.

We packed a lot into today, with the day planning done by Chris and Claude/Gemini, and some occasional help and friendly pointers from our driver Javier. We ended the day with yesterday’s Power Chicken leftovers (a very popular fast food spot with HUGE portions all over Honduras that should be visited if you ever come!) and a good night’s sleep. And luckily by midday today, my right butt cheek stopped hurting and burning, so I hope I’m on the short road to recovery from these coral reef scrapes.

Coral reef scrapes, the painful burn, and the 4-year-old who wants to ice mama’s butt

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Given that I am a city person through and through, I guess it’s no wonder that I’ve always had a fear of deep water, especially the ocean water. I’m a human being living on the land; by definition, the ocean is a foreign place to me because I cannot live in the ocean. And for all you people out there who love swimming in the ocean and think you are really a mermaid, reality check: you are not! So on the three previous times I’d been snorkeling and saw very, very deep water and can tell the ocean floor is extremely far below me, I occasionally have this tiny wave of panic come over me and just hope to some higher power that my leg doesn’t cramp up or my life vest does not suddenly fail. So then I take a deep breath and keep swimming.

This morning was our last morning in Roatan and our last chance to be at the beach before taking a plane to San Pedro Sula, where we’ll be until midday Monday. No one is going to complain about a last beach outing, and I wanted to seize the moment and go snorkeling one last time. So we went to the beach for a couple hours before packing up and heading to the airport. Chris did not share the desire to go snorkeling again, so when I went out, it was just me while he stayed ashore with Kaia.

This didn’t really bother me that he didn’t want to go out again. The water is pretty calm and virtually waveless. It’s really the perfect place to go snorkeling without supervision or help. So I went out on my own. For a long time, it felt really nice. I saw a lot of the same fish as yesterday, and this time, I saw even more schools of different fish varieties. But then suddenly out of nowhere, I got hit by a wave that I didn’t anticipate, and I got pushed into a really shallow (and seemingly dead) stretch of coral. Then, I got pushed into a sitting position — on top of the dead coral. This was a really shallow area — the water was barely even two feet deep here. I kept looking around to see where I could swim to escape the coral — it almost looked endless no matter which way I looked. How the hell was I supposed to get off this thing?! I eventually got out of the area and into open water, but I could tell that I had more than just a few nicks and scrapes. Something on my right butt cheek was burning, and it was definitely from stupidly sitting on the coral. I mean, it wasn’t like I meant to do that, but it just kind of happened…

This is why the ocean can be dangerous: you have no idea what is lurking out there that does not want you in its space. And they will do things to you to harm you if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. I swam quickly back to shore, where Kaia immediately noticed scrapes bleeding on my right leg and asked me about my “boo boo.” I went to the restroom to properly clean my scrapes and examine my wounds. The scrapes were fine — they looked like any other scrape. But the wounds that were on my right butt cheek were another story: they were bright red, puffing, pulsing, and burning. And this feeling was not reducing in the least bit even after I washed the area and tried to pour clean, cold water on it. After a shower, the pulsing pain and burning persisted. So en route to the airport, I told Chris we needed to stop by a pharmacy to see if I could get an ointment for this. I explained to a pharmacist what happened, and she gave me a hydrocortisone cream to apply on my scrapes. When we eventually got to our hotel in San Pedro Sula, the hotel manager was really kind and made me an ice bag, and I applied that to my butt for a bit in our room before we went out for dinner.

Kaia insisted on helping me ice my butt: “Mama, I wanna ice your butt!” She shrieked multiple times. So I let her push the ice bag against my butt while I lay on the bed. She’s always looking for ways to be helpful, and I know she has a very strong, caring, nurturing side to her (I’ve lost count of the number of times she checks in with me on random “boo boos” she finds on my body, when she asks if something hurts, and when she cares for all the dolls at school when it’s activity center time). I find it really sweet and endearing, and hope she continues to be caring and attuned to others’ feelings.

After dinner out at Power Chicken (a local fast food chain favorite with huge portions!), we showered and slept. But I still couldn’t sleep. The pulsing pain and burning was not improving. And now when I scratched it, there was a very deep pain that would result from that. The ice bag was not a proper ice pack, so I couldn’t sleep with it without wetting the bed eventually. So after 1.5 hours of burning and pulsating, I finally came up with the idea of taking the cold plastic water bottles in our fridge and using them as a pseudo ice pack setup. The fridge was cold enough, so I was finally able to fall asleep.

And… I tried falling asleep hoping this wasn’t some insane outlier coral reef scrape infection that would end in sepsis and potentially kill me.