running on empty

I managed to sleep in until 7 this morning, which is much better than the 4:30-5 o'clock that I have been doing lately. I was planning on a leisurely morning, but at 9:30 my phone rang. The city marathon was today and the special olympics had an aid station to supply water, juice etc to the runners. The first group of volunteers started at 5:30am and the phone call was one of them asking who we had scheduled for the 2nd shift of 9:30-1. Uhhh, no one, apparently. So I told them I'd be right there to help. On the way, I called my friend Chris and told him to get out of bed and get ready because I was coming to pick him up to help with the aid station. He did pretty good and was practically ready when I got there 5 minutes later, though he was only half-dressed when I got there and was whining that he hadn't had his coffee yet. I told him to suck it up and be a man, we had marathoner to hydrate. It turned out to be a fun morning - one person bought a bunch of food and we were having a picnic as the runners were going past. We were trying to cheer them on, but it's hard to yell encouragement with your mouth full of sushi and hummus. We considered putting a "help yourself" sign on the liquids table, but thought that would be a bit much, so we continued passing out the drinks and spritzing them with water as they walked past. The very last runner was a guy who was doing the entire marathon on stilts. Doing a marathon is crazy enough, but on stilts? That's downright nuts.

After I got Chris and myself back to our respective homes, a guy came by and bought our massage table - one less thing to deal with for the move. Then a couple friends stopped by to pick up a key from me, they needed tools out of their shop and didn't have a key, so they used mine. I guess this morning, Ryan was working on his house when the roof started collapsing on him, fortunately, Tony had come over right at the time when Ryan was doing his Atlas imitation and holding the house up so it didn't fall on his head. After Ryan was rescued, they figured they needed more tools - I think they need a new house. While they were over, Tony said he'd buy our car. A few hours later, I sold hubby's work van, so 2 vehicles less for me to worry about. Things are shaping up. YAY

don't think I could get tireder

HUGE yard sale today. We toted tons of stuff to my friend Sunny's home use and set it up in her driveway. I got there at about 6:30 this morning after waking up at 4:30am and not being able to fall back to sleep. I've been doing that a lot lately, waking up ridiculously early in the morning and eventually giving up on going back to sleep and just crawling out of bed cause it's better than staring at the ceiling. So anyway, we put out the signs at 7:30, though I didn't have stuff unpacked yet and people just started flocking in. People were pulling stuff out of tubs and shoving money at me, it was chaos - utter chaos. One nice guy even felt sorry for me and helped me set stuff up. About 6 hours later, I loaded up the few things that didn't sell and brought them directly to the thrift store conveniently located right behind Sunny's house. Though it was a lot of work, I got rid of a ton of stuff and came out of it about $500 richer - so I can't complain. I'm probably going to have a second sale in about a month, right before we leave, to get rid of the last of the stuff. Unless I manage to get rid of most of it on Craigslist. Tomorrow I'm going to take a much needed moving break and just sit around doing not much of anything.

As we were digging through our dvd's to sell, Angel #2 looked at the title of one and said, "The Sopranos? Is that a show about singers?" I ROTFL. I don't know why we have the entire season 3 of The Sopranos, I think it was one of those things we somehow accumulated from someone else who moved off-island and dumped their stuff on us. I've never seen an episode, but I DO know it's not a show about singers.

origami by lantern light

Yesterday evening, the power went out. It happens frequently in our little town and usually after 5-10 minutes, everything goes back on and all is well with the world. Well, last night, it got to be about an hour, things were getting dark and we had to light lanterns. Fortunately, I had taken the lanterns out and cleaned them about 2 hours earlier, but couldn't find a box to stick them in to carry them to tomorrow's yard sale, so they were sitting right on the kitchen counter, ready to go. The Angel had a friend over and she'd found an origami book we were getting rid of and decided to make Samurai hats for us all - except she kept getting Samurais and leprechauns mixed up. (This is the same girl who hasn't gotten her temporary driver's license yet because she can't pass the test, she can't remember the difference between the white and yellow lines.) Anyway, while she was making little hats, Angel #2 decided to make a pumpkin pie. Then, they had a wonderful idea. If you're sitting in house without electricity, trying to read an origami book by lanternlight, it's obvious you need to call a friend over. So, next thing I know, there's a teenage boy sitting in my kitchen making Samurai hats and eating pumpkin pie. I told them that when the power goes out in other houses, people tend to sit around and tell ghost stories or play charades or something - but they stuck with pie making and origami.

slooowly making progress

We are moving for sure and I'm trying not to think about how cold winters get in Wisconsin - or how hot it gets in August. Good thing is, since we're going back up there the beginning of August, I'll be used to warm weather and I'll slowly get acclimated back to the cold right along with everyone else once September and October roll around.

Saturday I'm having a garage sale and have boxes of stuff all ready to go. Friday night I'll haul them down to my friends house and hopefully everything will sell like hotcakes and I'll have to shut down early because there was nothing left to sell. I can be SUCH an optimist. She also lives right next to a salvation army type store, so whatever doesn't sell will head right over there and never darken my door again. Last night's project was all our office stuff - hubby set up shop in a corner of our bedroom and we've got file cabinets, desk, printers and all that kinds of stuff crammed in a corner of the room. A lot of it is now packed up and ready to sell. Today I'm tackling the basement and trying to get everything possible out of there so that area is cleaned up and I won't have to worry about it any more. Interesting the stuff I'm finding down there. I'm trying to figure out why WE thought it was necessary to bring his snowboard down here when we moved - I'm guessing that's heading back up to WI with us. Angel #2 took a big car load of stuff to the dump and is coming back with a friend of hers, so I'll have to people to slave for me. Ideally, we'd be out of the house by the end of July so we won't have to pay another month's rent, but I don't think that's going to happen - we'll have to see.

it's hula time

Today I went to a near by shopping center to watch some friends perform with their hula hale. One friend is the teacher-she also is one of the Special Olympics organizers and a bunch more are students. Today was their performance and I'd promised one of the dancers, who's also a SO athlete that I'd go and watch him - Chris, the guy practicing at my work the other day was also one of the dancers. Anyway, the whole group did awesome and it was really fun to watch. I bumped into some other friends who were also there for the show, so we all sat together.

Once I got home, I chatted with hubby a bit on the phone. It appears that his trip to the mainland was profitable in more ways than one and it's looking pretty darn likely that we'll be packing up and moving back up to Wisconsin. Work has pretty much dried up here on the islands but is still available up north, so it looks like it's back up we go. I'm ready to head back up, I'm kind of over the whole living in Hawaii thing. It's kind of funny, most of my friends who moved here from the Mainland love it, but in the last 24 hours, I've talked to friends who grew up on the island, lived on the Mainland for quite awhile, then came back to the island and hate living here. I guess it all comes down to taste and how much you enjoy the weather versus easy access to conveniences. Though our move isn't 100% for sure yet, I'm starting to sort through my house and getting rid of stuff that we really don't need, whether we move back or stay here. We've accumulated a lot of stuff over the last 4 1/2 years and it's really time to start getting rid of things. I love getting rid of stuff, it's so freeing. There are so many things I've held on to, on the chance that I might need it someday - but really, I can't for the life of me come up with a time that I'm going to need 25 sets of wooden chop sticks. Heck, I can't even figure out how to use chop sticks. So, into the garbage they went. I've started filling tubs for yard sale items and I'm going to call a friend to see if I can have a sale at her house - it would be pretty much impossible to have one at our house, it's just too difficult to navigate our driveway. I've also put some stuff on Craig's List and will be putting more on in the future. I'll have a lot of work ahead of me if we actually do move by the end of the summer, I might as well get a good head start.

Yum!

Had a great time at the after bocce potluck today. Someone brought fresh poi balls, which I'd never had before - turns out they're delicious. I also downed some Korean chicken, Mexican salad and the required Spam and topped it off with more poi balls, orange cake and some super rich peppermint cake. The visiting was even more fun than the food and we all had a great time. It started spattering rain just as we were cleaning up. Perfect timing.

Tomorrow, I've got to remember to head downtown, some of the athletes are also hula dancers and they're performing at one of the shopping centers. Ray, one of my particular sweetie peeties, asked me to come down and watch him dance and I would really hate to disappoint him, especially since I didn't get to watch him at the power lifting competition a couple months ago when I'd promised him I'd be there.

Tanya, someone I know hit a pig a couple months ago. It was a huge mess, it slid up the hood of the car and smashed her windshield. Then the rotten pig hit the road, got back on its feet and took off while she ended up in ER. Not only are they big and tough, but man, they're ugly. All black and furry with nasty tusks - they've been known to kill dogs. Every once in a while, I'll be behind a pickup truck with a big ol' dead pig lying in the back. Our neighbors go pig hunting quite a bit and I can hear them oinking and squealing at the crack of dawn (the pigs-not the neighbors). It's always open season on pigs around here, no license required if you hunt on your own land. If you're a good shot, you've got luau!

the utter stupidity of some people amazes me

Today I was driving to work and saw a guy on a motor scooter waiting at a stop light. I actually had to take a second look, because I didn't believe my eyes, but sadly, my eyes weren't deceiving me. The moron was riding a scooter one handed while holding a baby on his lap! Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. The baby was little too, it couldn't have been old enough to even walk yet. I would have called 911 right then and there, but it's now illegal to use your cell phone while driving and there was honestly no way for me to pull off and call in a timely manner and it would be just my luck to get busted for using the phone while driving. I hope someone else was able to and that guy his butt arrested.

I wasn't even supposed to work today, but figured I'd better since we were massively behind on doing a thorough inventory. So I spent the entire day crawling around counting packages of weedwacker string, 2-cycle engine oil and exciting stuff like that. Tomorrow I've got to get it all entered into the computer.

When I got home from work, I remembered that tomorrow after bocce ball, we're having a potluck at the park, so I needed to make something. Someone brought over a bazillion bananas last week and I really needed to use them up. You know how everyone gives away zucchinis from their garden in the summer? In Hawaii, bananas are our zucchinis. I haven't bought a banana in over 4 years. So I made a banana cake and 2 loaves of banana bread. Yesterday, Angel #2 made banana waffles. I've still got well over a dozen bananas in my fridge - they'll be headed to the freezer soon. Incidentally, I can't seem to grow a zucchini in our garden down here, it's really frustrating. And fresh zucchini in the grocery store sells for $2.50/lb and I refuse to pay that kind of money for a veggie I used to feed to the pigs because I had so blasted many of them. I'm really jonesin' for some zucchini now.

Tanya, we don't have raccoons down here (skunks either) so no chance of us hitting one of those. Most common roadkill found in Hawaii: mongoose 2nd most common (at least as far as I've seen) wild pigs and an occasional wild goat

hula songs are running through my head

Interesting day at work today - and no, it has nothing to do with the bathrooms. Our friend Chris stopped by. I've been friends with Chris since about October, we both started volunteering for Special Olympics around the same time. At the moment, Chris is living on the beach, he found a place to live and will be moving in at the end of the month. But, at present, he's a beach baby. He also does hula dancing. There's a certain dance that he's supposed to be leading and he's having problems getting the hang of it, so he videoed it and was going to go over it until he got it figured out. Problem is, a guy hula dancing at the beach could get a few strange looks, and when you look like Chris - a big Irish white guy, about 6'3", shaved head, earrings, tattoos, etc, you'll get some REALLY strange looks. So he was practicing in the showroom at work all afternoon. The same song, over and over and over again. So, guess what's running through my head over and over, etc. Yeah, I just may have to hurt Chris if I can't get that stupid song out of my head...then again, the sight of a 6'3", shaved headed white guy doing the hula is a picture that I may never get out of my head, ever. (yes, it looks as hilarious as it sounds)

Tonight, Angel #2 hit one of those inevitable driving milestones. She got her first kill. She's pretty sure it was a rat running across the road, and imo, if there's gonna be a rat around, having it smooshed underneath a tire is about the best place it can be. She's feeling pretty bad about the kill, but I think I made her feel better by telling her that Angel #1's first kill was a dove, and a rat is a much more manly kill than a dove. My first kill was a great big honkin' frog - I still remember the splatting sound it made when it hit the tire.

hmmm...

I think the comment Angel #4 made suggesting that instead of calling Wormeater WE, I should refer to him as His Awesomeness was rather interesting...especially since she spelled her own name wrong when she signed it. Does anyone besides me suspect foul play?

aloha Friday comes early

Thanks for the advice, Tanya, maybe I'll sprinkle some garam masala around the yard - and if it doesn't actually keep the pigs away, maybe it'll give the pork a nice tangy curry flavor. :P

We all got sick of being at work today, so it was decided to close the doors at 3pm and call it a day. Today is a state holiday - King Kamehameha Day - so we just told people we were closing for the holiday when in fact, we were just lazy and it was hot inside.

Yesterday afternoon, Angel #2 and I packed all the garbage and recycle stuff in the van and I went to haul it off to the transfer station. Turns out they've got new hours and close at 4pm. I got there at 4:15. I turned around and went home, then had the dilemma of do I unload all that garbage and reload it again in the morning, or just hope for the best? I took option #2 and fortunately, our garbage wasn't very stinky and I didn't even have to air out the van before taking the garbage in this morning. Is it pathetic that one of the highlights of my day was that my garbage didn't stink? Don't answer that.

shopping

Angel #2 and I went out for Mexican food tonight, then afterwards, we hit the grocery store. She went vegetarian at the beginning of the year, and I'm having a hard time finding decent food that she'll eat that the rest of the family will eat as well. So the other day, I bought a few vegetarian cookbooks and we went through them and picked out a few recipes to try out. We made a grocery list and headed to Safeway. Of course, one of the benefits of the rest of the family not being here, as #2 frequently points out, is that we can buy good food, leave it out in the open and it won't be immediately inhaled by everyone. Our shopping cart contained an interesting array really healthy food - chickpeas, shredded cabbage, mushrooms, leeks, etc and really UNhealthy food, like chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, potato chips and 2 tubs of frosting (to be eaten straight out of the tub with a spoon). There was no in between here, it was either good or bad. It'll be interesting to see what gets eaten first.

The spice of life

The thing about Hawaii is that when someone moves off island or back to the Mainland, they tend to leave a ton of stuff behind. We've got a lot of random stuff cluttering our house, stuff I would never buy, or would buy in limited numbers. We've got about 15 of those collapsible folding chairs, 2 big totes full of snorkel gear and spices...whoa, have we got the spices. Everyone has spices in their kitchen and they're not something you tend to take with you when you move away. In addition to the herbs and spices I bought when we moved here, I've also got the spice remnants of 4 different former island residents in my kitchen as well. This last batch I got is particularly interesting. A friend's neighbor moved away and they gave him the contents of their spice cabinet- h's got a very small kitchen and didn't want them, so he passed them on to me. I didn't know these people, but they sure were interesting cooks, there were spices in there I've never even heard of. They had 2 bottles of one particular spice blend - garam masala. Seriously, how many of you have ever heard of garam masala? And, if you have, would you really need 2 bottles of the stuff? How about pickling spice? Yeah, I've heard of that before, but does anyone really need 4 big bottles of the stuff? So anyway, I've got a spice drawer that is totally overflowing and I put a bunch of stuff into my separate food storage area downstairs just to get it out of the way. In an effort to get rid of some of them, I've been looking for recipes that call for lots of different herbs and spices or for some of the more unusual ones. Last night I made coriander cakes, they turned out pretty good. Today I found a recipe for roasted chickpeas that called for, of all things, garam masala! I'm going to pick up a couple cans of chickpeas today and give that baby a try. Maybe we'll really like it and I'll find a way to use up those two bottles of garam masala and have to go out and find some more.

Oh, and I know someone is going to want to point this fact out to me, I want you to know that I KNOW you're supposed to toss out spices that are more than a year old because they loose their potency. But I just don't feel right throwing out perfectly usable food - starving kids in Africa and all that stuff. I've just been doubling up whatever the recipe calls for, same basic effect with the added benefit of getting those spice bottles empty in a legitimate, non-throwing away sort of way.

it's so quiet

I dropped Angel #4 and hubby off at the airport this morning, then headed to work. Now that I'm home, it's just me and Angel #2 in the house. The most words spoken this evening at any one time was when she was telling me about her friend Sarah who lives with just her mom and how they try all kinds of bizarre fad diets. Her favorite was the 'pop diet', when you can only eat things that have the word pop in their name like popcorn, popsicles, soda pop, etc., though she also liked the sound of the ice cream diet where you don't eat anything all day, then eat ice cream for supper. I'm guessing Sarah and her mom aren't candidates for a multi page article in Healthy Living Magazine. Anyway, besides that very brief conversation, it's been pretty darn quiet in here. I suppose for those of you with no kids or who live by yourself, that isn't any big deal, but try living with 4 kids, a husband everyone refers to as "ADD Boy", a dog and 2 cats, and you'll appreciate silence like never before. Of course, this silence will probably end about 6:30 tomorrow morning when WE's cat starts meowing and yowling for him like it did this morning - AK-47 hasn't gotten the memo about WE not being home for the next month and she insists on calling for him. I wish cats understood English.

2 down 2 to go

We got the boys off on their flight today and as I'm writing this, they're somewhere about 30,000 feet up between San Francisco and Chicago. They'll get in around 5am Chicago time, then it's a 3 hour wait for the final flight that'll bring them to Wisconsin. Hubs and Angel #4 leave around noon tomorrow. Man, it's going to be quiet around here for the next month, especially since Angel #2 got her drivers license. I got the feeling I won't be seeing much of either her, or Debbie, our Toyota Echo, in the future.

I got caught on my way to the bathroom at work yesterday. Usually, when Terry, the bathroom obsessed guy is around, I figure I'm better off holding it than having him waylay me on the way to the bathroom to discuss the latest bathroom business. But yesterday, I didn't see him standing there about 20 ft from the door until it was too late and he got me. He had to tell me all about the improvements he made in that oh-so-important room this week. It now has a hook on the door to hang jackets - which might be useful if the temps ever got below 75 degrees, which they don't. There's also a handle right next to the doorknob, I don't know why we need that since it's on the inside of the door and the door opens out, so there's no reason on earth why you would need a handle there, especially since you could hang on to the knob if you really wanted to stay up close and personal with the door. The last improvement is a door stop, so now we can keep the door propped open if we want. I'm very excited about that feature since it was just the other day when I was sitting on the toilet thinking, this experience would be complete if only I could prop the door open and enjoy the view of the garbage truck parking lot next door and be able to visit with the random crazy homeless people that hang out by our building while draining my bladder. Of course, I'm just too darn nice to use sarcasm with Terry when he's so excited about the new bathroom improvements - after all, he's just a nice, old, albeit slightly crazy maintenance man. So, I told him that he's making it so nice in there I just may never want to leave. The other bathroom next to ours (the one with the dark purple walls and mustard yellow floor) has a chandelier in it, so I'm wondering if I should put in a request for one of those in our bathroom as well. After all, all tenants should be treated the same, don't you think?

packing

Tonight the boys are getting their bags packed for their flight to Wisconsin tomorrow. Angel #1 is spending the entire summer at my brother's and is coming back home the end of September. WE is coming back July 4. Hubs and Angel #4 are flying out Friday and are coming back with WE on the 4th. Hubby is flying back to WI then and spending the rest of the summer there since he's got work up there and in this economy, you go where the work is, ya know? Angel #2 is gone tonight on a band camping trip and will come home tomorrow after her brothers leave. So, last night was our last family Bible study together for a long time. We have a family Bible study just about every night. You should know enough of my family to know that our Bible studies aren't like other peoples studies, though we usually try to stay on course. The other night, for example, we were reading of Jesus riding the donkey into Jerusalem, which morphed into a conversation about donkey basketball games which somehow ended in a discussion about midget bowling. This kind of thing happens a couple times a week. You wouldn't expect anything different from the daydreamer family, now would you?

another milestone

Angel #2 got her drivers license today. As you can see, she's looking forward to the freedom of the road. I'm looking forward to more grey hair. Tomorrow, she's heading out with the high school band group on a camp out to the volcanoes. Thankfully, she's not driving, so all I have to worry about is the volcano blowing while she's there.

Hubby and Angel #1 came home full of stories about their special olympic trip to Oahu. If you've never spent time with a pile of special olympic athletes, you have no idea what it's like. It's like a regular soap opera with make-ups and break-ups and all kind of hormonal drama. Of course, there's also fart jokes. Angel #1 finally had to go in and tell the guys to go to sleep after they'd spent hours laughing hysterically at stupid fart jokes. One of the athletes is very borderline, he'd got in a car accident when he was about 18 and he's in his mid 20's now. He's planning on going to school to be a personal trainer. He told Angel #1 that he'd be doing a good job talking up some of the pretty young girl volunteers, until they saw his name tag, whose color indicated that he was an athlete, not a volunteer, then they'd shy away. It didn't take him long to figure out that he needed to hide his tag down into his shirt if he was going to get anywhere with the ladies. Then the world was his oyster. I'm so proud of both hubby and #1, but especially of #1. He went to practices right after school for two hours every Tues and Thurs for months and got to know and befriend the athletes, who think #1 is just the coolest guy ever and really respected him. The Angel enjoyed his time with them and talked for hours about their adventures on Oahu, which is amazing since he normally doesn't talk much at all. Seeing him out there helping those guys just about made my heart burst with pride. Watching your child give of himself to help others who are less fortunate is one of the greatest gifts a parent can get.