I want to share a success story of my mom-in-law. Her success story was to have improved her hemoglobin A1C in a short term.

Several months ago, her lab test result of hemoglobin A1C was pretty bad. It was somewhere in 8. This number is considered as a critical diabetic situation.

Since the shocking day, my mom-in-law drastically changed her diet. Although she loves eating carbohydrate groups especially breads, potatoes, and rice, she removed her favorite foods from her daily diet.

Six month later from the shocking day, she had another lab test.

At the clinic, her physician excitedly told her “congratulations!” My mom-in-law at first bewildered. She worried about for her pregnancy. As you know, when a female patient hears the “congratulation” word from her physician, it usually means a pregnancy, right? FYI: She does not need to worry. IF she was pregnant, I don’t mind to adopt their new born and raise him or her as our own child.

But this was not the case. What the physician was congratulating was about her hemoglobin A1C result.

Her hemoglobin A1C was dropped to somewhere in 4. This is a very good number. She completely recovered herself from diabetes. It is a real amazing story. She made it possible only in six months duration.

She loves drinking Coke. In the past six months, she still had a can of Coke every day. She never gave it up. She concluded that taking sugar, in her case; Coke, is fine with her body.

She told me that since everybody’s body functions differently, I will have to find out what is the main cause to raise the blood sugar level in my body. It might be carbohydrates just like her experience, or it might be sugar unlike her.

I am so happy for her success on recovering her good health.

***

While I was listening to her story, I was wondering what method will work for me to the point where I can completely reserve my diabetes.

I am now right in the process of my challenge. It is the intermittent fasting; the method of 16/8. I fast 16 hours every day from 7 p.m. to 11 a.m.

I started it on October 1st. It has been 48 days so far. My weight had gradually reduced in a baby step until two days before my recent monthly period. I had a sudden weight gain and unfortunately, my body keeps the gained weight. I weighed 61.2 kg on October 1st. I lost to 59.3kg on October 23rd. As of today it is back to 60.7 kg…

That being said, I still am thinking positively. The universal rule is that we are all connected and that everything happens for a reason. My mom-in-law’s success motivates me and inspired me. It was possible for her, and that means it will be possible for me, right?

While my evening walk of yesterday, I saw a hawk perched at the light pole in our street. Since a hawk is a messenger from spirit world, I felt the hawk told me to be alert and to be open to receive his messages.

***

I was right. The message came through my dream this morning.

In my dream I was in the airplane. I was with my daughter. We were on our way to Japan to visit my parents. So far, it was the same as usual. But the next scene was different from normal. The flight attendance escorted us to our seats. Our seats were in the cockpit.

I never saw that kind of view in my physical life. My daughter and I were sitting in front of all the handles and buttons to operate the airplane. In front of us, there was nothing but a wide clear view of blue sky.

We, my daughter and I, operated the airplane very well as the pilots. We arrived at Japan safely.

There, we had a good time with my parents. My parents were very healthy and active. We walked to our favorite restaurant along the beach. We enjoyed watching the surface of the ocean shined by the Sun. We laughed a lot together. It was so nice to see them in such a happy status.

***

In the evening in real life, I contacted my parents. I am happy to know that they are enjoying their normal life at their house.

I thought of the hawk showed up last night. I feel the hawk shared his vision with me. The vision was what he always sees from high up in the sky. From his bird’s view, everything looks good. I feel the hawk wants to share his perspectives to see things like he does. All is good. I realized everything is going as it should be. I appreciate the hawk for a wonderful message and vision.

Since two days ago, I gained my weight by 1 kg (2 lb) all of a sudden. I honestly didn’t do anything bad to my body such as eating sweets or too much amount. Usually I gain weight right before monthly period. I was right. My monthly period came yesterday, which was one week later than the scheduled date. As for the sudden weight rise, it calmed down with monthly period. My weight dropped down by 0.7 kg. I feel relieved.

This year of 2019 was the start year of my menopause. My monthly period cycle started showing its irregularity. Here is the log of my monthly period in the year 2019.

January 20th

February 19th – 30 days

March 16th – 25 days

April 18th – 33 days

May 10th – 22 days

June 9th – 30 days

July 14th – 35 days

August NA

September 3rd – 51 days

October 3rd – 30 days

November 14th – 42 days

Regardless of its irregularity, I appreciate that I still had it in each month except for August. I appreciate my body cells for keep having the cycle rather than completely ended. That being said, I will accept my body’s aging process. It is a natural process anyway.

IKEA’s soft toy drawing voting has started.

You can vote every day from today until their last voting day of November 28th.

My daughter’s Drawing ID 607553.

Please support her drawing if you can. Thank you.

My daughter’s birthday is coming closer. She started counting down the days until her birthday. Previously she had been counting down the days until Halloween. After Halloween, her counting down was switched to her birthday.

She made her wish lists for her birthday gift. The top item of her wish list item is a new iPad.

Her wish naturally came true, in an unexpected way.

The other night my husband was talking with his mom over the phone. His mom complained about her brand new iPad that she recently purchased; the 7th generation. She has worked on the setting, but she has suffered from dealing with new procedures. She was almost ready to give up on the setting. My husband suggested his mom to pass it down to our daughter.

His mom never thought of passing it down to my daughter, but she thought it a good idea. My daughter wants to have it, and she will be good at using it anyway. There are other good reasons to pass it down to her. She was selected as a member of Honor Society, and she deserves to be cerebrated. Her birthday is coming up too.

This evening the package the new iPad was delivered to my daughter.

My husband helped my daughter for the setting, so it didn’t take long for her to finish setting.

Now she is so happy for her new iPad.

I read the news about Dean Foods. This America’s largest milk producer is filling for bankruptcy because Americans are now drinking less cow milk than ever.

***

I recall my younger days. I grew up in the age where people were strongly encouraged to drink cow milk. The teachers emphasized the students the importance of drinking cow milk. All the adults were well-educated by mass media to encourage everybody to keep drinking cow milk every day.

In Japanese elementary schools, all the students were forced to drink a bottle of cow milk for lunch. It was a mandatory. There was no substitutes for cow milk. I never liked cow milk. My intuition told me it was not good for my body. I told my teachers many times that I didn’t want to drink cow milk. All the teachers didn’t listen to me. Lunch time was supposed to be fun for all the students, but it was not for me. Because of the drinking cow milk mandatory, I could not fully enjoy the school lunch.

I never drank cow milk anywhere except for school lunch. My mom always kept cow milk in our home refrigerator. I never touched it at home. After I left my parents’ house and started living by myself, I never bought it by myself. Whenever I needed milk for my recipes’ ingredient, I used soy milk as a substitute.

***

I remember my late friend whom I met when I was 29 years old. He was a psychic / spiritual healer living in Los Angeles. Since he was dealing with good health and healing people, he would repeatedly give two instructions to everybody whom he met. The first instruction was not to smoke a cigarette. The second instruction was not to drink cow milk. He would confirm these two were the main causes to make people sick.

I totally agreed with him. However, people could not accept his instructions easily. At that time, the majority of people had a habit of smoking and drinking cow milk. Especially as for cow milk, since the government officially encouraged the people to drink cow milk, it was hard for many people to believe him.

If he were alive in this age, he would have been happy for the current trend; people drink less cow milk. People have started drinking more alternative milk such as soy milk, almond milk, and cashew milk. My daughter is blessed with this good trend. She is not forced to drink cow milk at school. Her school offers alternative milk to her.

This trend is one of the evidences of “森羅万象” (Shinrabansho). All the creations in the universe have been evolving. All is good.

Maybe, my late friend have been working so hard for this evolving. If so, he has been successful. The number of smokers and cow-milk-drinkers have been dropped down than before. Thank you Yamamura-san for your continuous support and love to us.

Today was a national holiday observed Veterans Day. Many restaurants in town offered a free meal for veterans. My husband went to town to deal with some of his chores. According to him, the entire town was packed with people. There were many cars’ waiting lines in front of restaurants here and there.

My daughter and I stayed at home and enjoyed our quiet and peaceful time together.

Interesting synchronicity happened.

Today is November 11th, written as 11/11. When my daughter and I happened to check the time, it was 11:11 a.m. Then, later when we were done with our small projects and checked the time together again, it was 1:11 p.m.

I took it a message from my family spirits.

I felt they were trying to remind me of “a start.” In order to have a start, I need to make room for it. I felt my family spirits are encouraging me to let go of the old things in order to make room for something new to enter.

It resonated with me.

***

I breathed out as long as I could, with the old energy. The old things can include old habits, old way of thinking, and old human relationships; anything do not fit to my current energy anymore. It is okay for me to let them go.

After I breathed out, I felt the emptiness for a while. Emptiness came with loneliness, then it moved to joy to be released and to be free. Feeling much lighter than before, without any obligation. I felt good.

I realized it is the condition of being in center. No right / wrong. No good / bad. No exist / non-exist. No happy / sad. I am standing just right in the center.

I thought of being at “Zero-point.” In Japanese culture, our gods is counted as “柱” “Hashira”. Hashira is described as “being center”. Nothing bothers it. It simply stands in the center.

Then, I let the new air come in to my body. Now I am ready to accept new energy.   

Since yesterday I have been working on my wood craft projects. I completed two projects on this weekend.

My first project was a small coffee table. I applied a light blue paint on my new table as the same color of my daughter’s table. Now my new table works perfectly as an extended table for my daughter’s coffee table. My daughter is loving it.

My other project was a huge chalk board. This was done in a simple way. I smoothed out the surface of a big size of rectangle lumber with a sandpaper and applied a chalkboard paint on it. Then I connected the chalkboard onto a leftover frame of a crib by drilling screws. I put this big chalkboard in my room. I can use it whenever I want to brainstorm my ideas or something. I am loving it.  

One thing I suffered during my projects was a fire red ant. I was so into my projects that I didn’t notice they bit me several different places in my body.

In the morning I worked on my wooden craft projects in the backyard.

I washed the lumbers, wiped them off with a cloth, measured the sizes and marked them, and cut them with a saw.

While I was working, I heard some moving sound inside the pile of buckets. I thought it was from a lizard. I knew some lizards living in our backyard. But the sound was different from usual. It sounded somewhat violent and continued for longer than usual.

I asked my husband to come over and check. He checked the bucket one by one. Then he made a dull “ew” sound.

He quietly beckoned me by using his pointing finger. I reluctantly went closer to see it.

It was a baby snake with small and skinny body. The snake just captured a lizard, which was bigger than the snake. The snake didn’t care my husband and I observing it, because it was busy munching on a lizard’s head. The lizard’s body was hanging from the snake’s mouth.

***

We called the local police and animal control department. Soon enough, less than 5 minutes from the call, a fire truck arrived at our house. Two young male firefighters got out from the fire truck.

One of the firefighters at first tried to use a tool to pick up the baby snake, but the baby snake was too small to pick. He then used his own fingers to pick the snake up and put it in the white container with a screw lid.

When he picked the snake up in the air, the snake dropped the lizard. The fire fighter picked the lizard up and put it in the container too. He said “here is your food.” We all smiled at each other on how nice he was. My husband and I thanked them for dealing with this issue promptly.  

It was one of the benefits to live in a small town. Police and fire department are available for us right away. Everybody is laid back and friendly.

Winter is almost here. That means we will need to be alert for snakes. We see more snakes in winter rather than summer in this area.

My daughter was selected for a member of National Elementary Honor Society. She was invited to their official membership ceremony this evening.

I didn’t grow up in America so I didn’t know about this society. Their official website mentions about the criteria to select the members as follows.

Eligibility Requirements

Students in grades 4-6 who meet the requirements for membership outlined by their school’s chapter are eligible to be invited for membership.

Each chapter is required to publish its qualifications for membership, which is based on the four pillars of NEHS:

Scholarship

Per national guidelines, at a minimum, students must have a cumulative GPA of 85, B, 3.0 on a 4.0 scale, or equivalent standard of excellence. (Each school chapter is allowed to require a higher cumulative GPA.)

Responsibility

Service

Leadership

***

Before the ceremony, my husband talked with the responsible person for this society. He assured this membership is truly honorable. Some parents complain for not their children being selected. He has to explain the parents the selection was made by careful consideration of the four criteria. The schools are requested to submit the evidences to prove the student’s qualification. The membership can be a great help when applying a scholarship and even in job hunting.

***

At the ceremony, I saw one mother who is familiar to us. She has two children who go to the same club activities held at the library; the coding club and the electric club. The mom was so proud of her children. I saw her crying during the ceremony. As a matter of fact, she was not the only who was shedding tears of joy. I saw other parents wiping off their tears. I did all my effort on not to cry during the ceremony. I cried alone at home, before the ceremony.

The ceremony was impressive. Four older grade members came to support the ceremony. Each member came up to the stage and explained about what to be expected to the members on each criteria.

Among them, I was touched about the leadership criteria the most.

It was explained like this.

Leadership is not always taken place from the front. Sometimes a great leader stands side by side with the group. Other times a great leader needs to support the group from behind, to make sure everybody is doing fine.

As for scholarship, they emphasized the importance of studying. Study is a lifelong business. Nobody can finish their study once school is done. Everybody’s journey to study continues until the very last day of their life. They encouraged the members to keep on studying. Study can be about anything and can be done anytime. 

Once they learn something, it is their responsibility to use their knowledge and wisdom to lead others.

That leads to service. Any kinds of service is actually done for members themselves. Whenever the member offers any services, he/she should feel joy in offering the service. Offering service is actually joy for themselves, not to please others.

I enjoyed attending the ceremony. It was great.

***

After we came back home, I informed my parents and in-laws about the NEHS membership ceremony. All the four grandparents were very happy and proud of their granddaughter. I appreciate my daughter to make our parents so happy and proud of her. Not to mention, she always makes my husband and me happy and proud of her. I am blessed to have her as my daughter in this life.